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THE 



LIFE 



OF 



JOHN MILTON. 

BY 

CHARLES SYMM01JS, D.D. 

OF JESUS COLLEGE, OXFORD. 



SECOND EDITION. 



Si tyrannos insector, quid hoc ad reges ? quos ego a tyrannis 
longissime sejungo. Defen. secund. — 

Nunc sub foederibus coeant felicibus una 
Libertas, et jus sacri inviolabile sceptri: 
Rege sub Augusto fas sit laudare Catonem. 

Dr. George. 



LONDON: 

PRINTED BY T. BENSLEY, BOLT COURT, FLEET STREET, 

FOR NICHOLS AND SON; F. AND C. RIVINGTON; OTRIDGE AND 
SON; T. PAYNE; J. CUTHELL; VERNOR, HOOD, AND SHARPE; 
R. LEA; J. WALKER; CLARKE AND SONS; LACKINGTON, 
ALLEN, AND CO.; J. NUNN ; LONGMAN, HURST, REES, AND 
ORME; CADELL AND DAV1ES ; J. HARDING; R. H. EVANS; 
J. MAWMAN; J. HATCHARD; MATTHEWS AND LEIGH; AND 
J. JOHNSON AND GO. 

1810. 






t*%* 



To the Memory of 
my most dear and accomplished Son, 

CHARLES SYMMONS, 

by the suggestions of whose fine mind and perfect taste 

I have been largely benefitted as a writer, 

and to the contemplation of whose piety and virtues, 

the sources of much of my past happiness, 

I am indebted for all my present consolation, 

I inscribe 



THIS LIFE OF MILTON; 



which, having grown under his eye 

and been cherished with his regard, 

is dear to me for merit, 

not intrinsically its own. 

On the 23 d of May, 1805, 

before he had completed his twenty-second year, 

he was torn from my affection and my hopes, 

experiencing from his God, 

the recompense of a pure life, 

in the blessing of an early death. 

CHARLES SYMMONS. 



B 



PREFACE. 

Though a part of my former preface has 
now lost its reference, I am induced to retain 
the entire composition, as it was written 
under the impression of principles, not liable 
to decay, and of wounded affections which 
can cease to pain, alas! only in the grave. 
What I have now to say will relate altogether 
to the present edition of my work — to those 
inaccuracies in it which I have corrected, 
those deficiencies which I have supplied, or 
those opinions which have been pronounced 
on it since its property was transferred from 
me to the public. 

In quoting by memory from Dr. John- 
son, I had been guilty of a verbal error; and 
the slip was not suffered to be made with 
impunity. On the passage in question, which 
referred to that writer's censure of the " Da- 
mon/' one of the public critics remarked, 
" Here, however, we must impeach the bio- 



4 PREFACE. 

grapher of mistake or lapse of memory in 
quoting affectation where the original gives 
us imitation of pastoral life, as part of the 
argument is ingrafted upon the harshness of 
the word used." a Though no essential part 
of my argument was dependent on the mis- 
cited word, (for imitation, with, childish, for its 
adjunct, implies what is sufficiently imjurious 
and false to justify my censure and refuta- 
tion,) I was thankful to the critic for his re- 
mark; and the error has, in consequence, 
been blotted from my page. 

On that place, where I appeal to the 
academical registers for the proof of Milton's 
not having lost a term before he took his 
bachelor's degree, and content myself with 
specifying the year only for the date of this 
event, the same critic, not without some 
confusion in his language, observes, that 
" Dr. S. who quotes the register of Christ's 
College in his" (Milton's I suppose) " vindi- 
cation, should have substantiated his" (Dr. 

* Crit. Review, series 3d. ix. 26g, in a note. . 



PREFACE. O 

S— ' s I conclude) " point by the adduction of 
more minute testimony, as his? (Milton's 
again) " having taken his degree in 1628, 
unless it were in the early part of that year, 
after having entered in 1624-5, is obviously 
inconclusive." 15 In the early part of 1628 
Milton could not have taken his degree, for 
then his requisite number of terms would not 
have been completed : but, (as we may chuse 
to follow the present calendar, or that which 
computed the beginning of the year from 
March) he took his degree either early in 1629 
or in one of the latter months of 1628. He took 
it, in short, at the accustomed and regular time 
of taking the B. A. degree in Cambridge, viz. 
in January; and though he might have taken 
it in the preceding term, the measure would 
not have been consistent with the usual and 
most reputable practice. With respect to 
time therefore, he took his degree with the 
strictest regularity, and as soon as he properly 
could. This fact however is not, after all, so 
decisive of the controverted point as I once 
thought it, or as my censor, (if I am right in 

b lb. 264. 



O PREFACE. 

my inference of his meaning,) is willing to ad- 
mit it to be. As I am an historian with truth, 
and not an advocate with victory for my ob- 
ject, I will here fairly state the case for the 
reader's uninfluenced determination. Milton 
entered in Feb. 1624-5, and took his first de- 
gree in Jan. 1628-9. Exclusively, however, 
of the term in which he entered and of that 
in which he took his degree, it was necessary 
for him to keep only ten terms; and, if he 
kept the term immediately subsequent to 
that in which he entered, he would still have 
one term to spare: whether or not, therefore, 
he kept every term during the year in ques- 
tion must now be regarded as a point which 
it is impossible to ascertain. Having made 
this statement to weigh what it can in the 
estimation of Milton's enemies, and acknow- 
ledged my own hasty and inaccurate conclu- 
sion from premises which were correct, let 
me profess that my conviction on the subject 
remains unalterably as it was. It is possible, 
and even probable that Milton passed one 
of his terms under his father's roof: but his 
positive assertion, that he had not incurred 
any academical disgrace, makes it evident, 



PREFACE* 7 

as I think, that his absence from the Univer- 
sity in this instance was not the conse* 
quence of any punishment; but was an act 
either of obedience to his father's will, or of 
submission to necessity, from the want of 
pecuniary supplies* On this supposition the 
expressions of" vetiti laris," and " exsilium," 
would be strictly or poetically proper ; and 
if he had suffered rustication, he would not 
surely so confidently affirm, when it was in 
the power of numbers to disprove him, that 
he had taken his degree " procul omni flagi- 
tio f for every scholar knows that flagitium 
means not only facinus and vitium, but pro* 
brum and dedecus, — not merely crime, but 
shame and disgrace. 

As this work was originally written under 
circumstances not favourable to its perfec- 
tion, I was fearful that it might be found, on 
a revision, not only faulty in the substance 
and the mode, but deficient also in the just 
measure of its information. Its demand 
however for correction has proved to be less 
than I had reason to apprehend; and on 



8 PREFACE. 

looking on every side for some fresh sources 
of intelligence, I have not been able to dis- 
cover any from which I could draw more than 
a few accidental drops of what I deemed 
worthy of my reader's participation. The 
little new matter which I have obtained, has 
been derived from the kindness of Mr. Bind- 
ley, the first commissioner of the Stamp Of- 
fice : a gentleman who delights in the com- 
munication of the large and curious literary 
stores which he possesses ; and whose bene- 
volence, while it gives enjoyment to his own 
declining age, diffuses pleasure around the 
circle in which he moves. With reference to 
myself, I must regret that my acquaintance 
with this friend to literature and its profes- 
sors has been formed at so late a period : 
but it gratifies me to be yet indulged with 
this opportunity of acknowledging my obli- 
gations to him, and of evincing my feeling of 
worth by professing my respect for him. 

On striking the account with public criti- 
cism, I am gratified to find the balance con- 
siderably in my favour. If in some of its 



PREFACE. 9 

pages I am subjected to more censure and 
in others am treated with more munificence of 
praise, in none of them am I consigned to 
unqualified condemnation. In one indeed of 
these vehicles of critical remark I find a 
charge brought against me of republicanism ; 
and in another, of insincere attachment to 
the church of which I am a member : but 
neither of these charges can touch me with 
the irritation of a feather, as they are repelled 
by the evidence of my work, of my con- 
nexions, and of the uniform tenor of my writ- 
ings and my conduct through life. 

Satisfied however as I ought to be with 
the general result of public criticism, I have 
been struck, and at the same time pleased, as 
I will confess, with the variety and, in some 
instances, the contradiction of its opinions. 
Here a fault has been objected to me, and 
there with another name it has been thrown 
into my scale for merit. By one my prose 
composition has been censured, and by an- 
other my verse. This critic discovers that my 
translations are superfluous, and that pro- 



10 PREFACE. 

nounces my numbers to be defective ; while 
a third boldly affirms my style to be unfit for 
narration, as it rises to turgidity and bombast, 
and surpasses the modesty, not only of bio- 
graphical narrative but, of prose itself! My 
translations shall plead for themselves, and 
shall find in me as silent an advocate as they 
do in the ingenuous Mr. Hayley : c but of my 
prose, which has been thus fearfully ar- 
raigned, I must be permitted to suggest some- 
thing in the defence. 

Between the false and the true in com- 
position the separating line is strong and 
broad. Where ideas strut in a pomp of ex- 
pression, to which they can allege no claim ; 
where they are oppressed with an incum- 
bency of words; where, from vague concep- 
tion, they are indistinct, or, from wrong per- 
ception, broken and disordered, the style sug- 
gests the sense of incongruity, disproportion, 
and deformity, and we justly brand it as 
turgid, bombastic, and not calculated to fulfil 

c See his publication of Cowper's translations of Milton'i Latin 
and Italian poetry. 



PREFACE. 11 

the first duty of language, that of communi- 
cating thought with propriety and precision. 
This is the false in composition, and while 
the critic may explain the causes of the error, 
the illiterate will feel and will recoil from it 
with disgust: all that is not thus incongruous 
and disproportioned, undefined and confused 
in the ideas and the diction is true ; and the 
space between the very simple and the very 
figurative is sufficiently wide to allow the 
writer to walk or to run, as his spirits may 
prompt or his taste may direct. If my com- 
position, therefore, be convicted of any of 
these enumerated crimes it must necessarily 
be condemned : — if it be found innocent, it 
must be acquitted ; and the greater number 
of my readers will not perhaps complain if 
while their understandings are not abused, 
their fancies should be entertained. Inter- 
vening, indeed, between the true and the falsa 
there are the several degrees of the better and 
the worse, not ascertainable by any fixed 
standard of principle, but left for discrimina- 
tion to the loose and floating sentiment of 



II PREFACE. 

taste. In this nicer graduation of styles, if 
mine should be determined by a plurality of 
voices to be too remote from the just point, 
I must submit to be censured, and must con- 
tent myself with imputing the fault to the 
vice rather of my nature than of my judg- 
ment. I never strain after allusion, or labo- 
riously beat the thicket for game : it springs 
around me in abundance; and I am com- 
pelled to refuse more than I take. If I could 
show my readers what I reject before it drops 
upon the paper and what is subsequently 
withdrawn by my prudence, they would per- 
haps pardon the errors which I have com- 
mitted, for those which, under the impulse 
of temptation and with something of violence 
to my feelings, I have virtuously abstained 
from committing. 

Having intimated, with reference to my 
own case, a contrariety in some of the deci- 
sions of public criticism, I may be asked the 
cause of this opposition of judgment in writ- 
ers, who profess to determine without passion 
and on principles which are established and 



PREFACE. 13 

invariable. But not to remark that, in the 
trial of literary composition, much must al- 
ways be left to the discretion of individual 
taste, and that in criticism, as in law, there is 
something of a glorious uncertainty, it must 
be observed that, in consequence of the pre- 
sent eager demand for periodical criticism 
which seems to be increasing with the hour, 
every man, who can arrange a common sen- 
tence, is invited, with the helmet of Orcus 
on his head, to assume the office of a critic, 
and thus to pass sentence on the merits, if 
not on the destinies of authors. The pen on 
these occasions is frequently, as I know, in 
the hand of ability and learning : but it is 
also, as I am likewise certain, not infre- 
quently in that of imbecillity and ignorance. 
I am far however from objecting to this in- 
discriminate exercise of criticism, which, pro- 
ductive as it may be of partial evil, must, in 
my view of its operation, have a tendency to 
general good. I wish, indeed, that every 
man who can spell would turn critic; and 
<rom the extended agitation of opinion, which 



14 - PREFACE. 

would thus be excited, I am satisfied that the 
cause of truth would eventually flourish. 
Beneath the flood, which covers the plain, 
fertility will rest upon the soil, and though 
the weaker vegetation may perish, the root 
of the stronger will be cherished, and the 
branch of the loftier be adorned with more 
copious and animated green. 

By more than one of the public critics I 
have been charged with injustice to the me- 
mory of Dr. Johnson ; and for my treatment of 
this extraordinary and inconsistent man, in 
whom so many trails of great and so many of 
little and mean character concur to excite in 
the same moment our respect and our pity, 
I have been censured with some degree of 
harshness by a writer, of whose conduct to 
me in- other respects I feel no reason to com- 
plain. d The intellectual power of Dr. John- 
son with his numerous virtues, and those pre- 
judices which united him with a potent fac- 
tion in the state, conciliated during his life 
the attachment of many illustrious friends, 

* The Cabinet, Vo. I, p. 35. 



PREFACE. 15 

and, when he ceased to breathe, communi- 
cated a species of sanctity to his grave. Of 
this I was aware in the commencement of 
my undertaking ; and, repressed by a sensi- 
bility of which he had shewn himself to be 
insusceptible when he violated the ashes of 
Milton, my hand paused, as I reflected that 
he, on whom it was to fall, had paid the last 
debt of human infirmity, and was no longer 
in a condition to offend or resist. The sug- 
gestions of feeling in this instance pressed me 
more strongly than those of prudence ; and, 
superior as I was conscious of being with 
the weapons of truth, I wished him to 

" be alive again, 
" To dare me to the desert with his sword." 

But death can consecrate only virtue and 
truth ; and with the fear of posthumous con- 
viction and disgrace would be extinguished 
one of the most powerful restraints of human 
enormity and excess. If every villain were 
assured of an inviolable asylum for his me- 
mory in the tomb ; and a James or a Wild 



16 PREFACE. 

were to rest unmolested by the side of an 
Antoninus or a Socrates, the desire of fame 
and the terror of reproach would be deprived 
of half of their beneficial influence; and every 
wretch, who could defy the laws and was not 
afraid of God, would indulge his selfish pas- 
sions without the check of a con troll. But 
the case is too clear to admit of illustration ; 
and if we cannot, like the old Egyptians 
with respect to their deceased monarchs, sub- 
mit the dead to the striking solemnity of a ju- 
dicial process, it belongs to the historian and 
the biographer to bring their conduct to the 
bar of Truth, and firmly to pronounce her 
sentence of acquittal or condemnation. On 
the dead indeed only can the sentence of 
truth, at all times and without the plead- 
ing of any opposing duty, be pronounced. 
Have I then advanced against Dr. Johnson a 
single charge unsupported by sufficient evi- 
dence ? Have I accused him of malignity to 
Milton, when the crime can be denied by the 
most bigotted of his adherents? Have I called 
him the coadjutor and accomplice of Lauder, 



PREFACE. 17 

when the propriety of the terms is not fully 
established by the production of facts? The 
case in truth, is in this instance not stated 
so strongly as it might be against the au- 
thor of the Rambler; and it is the pru- 
dence of his friends not to provoke any 
further discussion of the subject, as it must 
infallibly terminate in his greater confusion. 
If he was not actually privy to the forgeries 
of the northern schoolmaster, whose confi- 
dence he accepted and abused, he certainly 
had sufficient reason to suspect them ; and 
with his friend, Cave, he resisted their deiec- 
tion as long as the resistance could be either 
effectual or safe. In any event, he adop f ed the 
whole of Lauder's malignity ; and let his par- 
tisans first clear him of this offence before 
they talk bigly of his innocence, and bluster 
in his cause. Urged as I have been by some, 
whom I respect and love, to soften what I 
have said against him, with my conviction of 
the atrocity of his conduct, to one of the most 
perfect characters which is to be found in 
the page of biography, I have not erased a 

c 



18 PREFACE. 

syllable respecting him, and have felt more 
inclined to strengthen than to mitigate the 
censures, of which I have made him the sub- 
ject. Even the concluding sentences of my 
work, which seem to extend their crimination 
to his general merits as a writer, I have not 
persuaded myself to omit: and if it be a 
crime in me, w T ith the fullest sense of the 
great powers of his mind, to regard him as a 
corrupter of our style, to affirm that I dis- 
like the fatiguing and laborious monotony of 
his sentences, and, delighted as I have been 
with the occurrence of brilliant passages, of 
vigorous and original thought, to assert that 
I have never yet read one of his productions 
with unmingled or even with prevailing plea- 
sure; if this I say be a crime in me, I cannot 
hesitate to avow it, and I must consent to 
visit that allotment of future time, which may 
belong to me, with the brand of guilt flagrant 
on my forehead. 

My preface is already too long: but I must 
be forgiven if I still lengthen it to touch upon a 
topic, which stands in connexion with my work. 



PREFACE. 19 

When I offered the translations of some 
of Milton's Latin and Italian poetry to the 
public, I introduced them with a note of 
civility to Mi\ Cowper: and to Mr. Hay- 
ley, who has enriched himself by convert- 
ing the ashes of his friend into gold, I have 
shewn myself disposed, in more than one 
instance, to be too liberal rather than too 
economical of praise. Not regarding the 
translator's palm as an object worthy of con- 
test, I translated merely for the entertain- 
ment of my readers : but I translated also, as 
I will ingenuously confess, or I would not 
have translated at all, without a conscious- 
ness of inferiority to the writer who had pre- 
ceded me on the ground. Having published, 
however, in the course of the last year, the 
whole of his departed friend's translations 
from my author, Mr. Hayley has favoured 
me w^ith notices which are not of a nature to 
exact my thanks, or to impress me with anj r 
strong idea of a just and honourable mind. 
Of one of my translations alone has he con- 
descended to speak; and of this he has judged 



20 PREFACE. 

it right to speak in such a manner as strongly 
to imply that it is the single instance of poe- 
tic translation to be discovered in my volume. 
That this was the persuasion which he in- 
tended to communicate to his readers, is ma- 
nifested by his subsequent conduct: for on 
occasions which he has improved to display 
his candour and his taste, by lavishing extra- 
vagant commendations on some very subor- 
dinate versions of the " Mansus " and the 
" Damon/' he has carefully buried mine in 
the profundity of silence. In a kw passages, 
indeed, he has been pleased to couple my 
name, as a writer, with some civil epithets t 
but at the same time he has prudently guarded 
against any possible excitement of my vanity, 
by throwing me into company, not of a class 
to corrupt me with improper sensations of my 
own importance. As Mr. Cowper's transla- 
tions may now be confronted with mine, I 
have only to declare that, if the relative 
merit of the latter should be determined by 
the general suffrage to be inconsiderable, I 
shall be happj', whenever another edition of 



PREFACE. 21 

my work may indulge me with the opportu- 
nity, to remove them from the eyes of a judi- 
cious public, of which, under this decision, 
I must pronounce them to be wholly un- 
worthy. 

By one of the public critics 6 I have been 
referred to a translation of the " Damon" by 
the pen of the late unfortunate Dermody, with 
a suggestion that it is superior to that which 
I have submitted to my readers. Having 
not, however, been able to find this transla- 
tion in the place where I was directed to look 
for it, I am still unacquainted with it other- 
wise than by this critic's report ; and I can 
therefore only profess with truth, that if it 
really deserve the preference which he assigns 
to it, (and I am very well disposed to believe 
that it may), I shall be honestly gratified by 
the fact: for desirous as I may be of erecting 
myself to the stature of higher men, I am far 
from wishing to depress them to the medi- 
ocrity of mine. So that I were permitted to 

e See the article in the Cabinet, to which I have before re* 
ferred. 



22 PREFACE. 

retain my own positive rank, intellectual and 
moral, it would please me to see my whole 
species on an elevation above me : since, ac- 
tuated by an ambition the very reverse of 
Caesar's, I would rather be the last of an an- 
gelic community than the first of a human. 

With respect to Mr. Hay ley, I may per- 
haps be arraigned of ingratitude or deficient 
taste, when I express a wish that he had ob- 
liged me by a total forgetfulness of my very 
name; and had reserved the whole impres- 
sion of his praise, in its unbroken integrity, for 
Messrs. Cowper, Langhorne, Stockdale, Ster- 
ling, and Todd. With no peculiar abstinence 
to boast in my appetite for praise, I am con- 
tented with that portion of it which has been 
adjudged to me : and I may candidly confess 
that, while it has satisfied my desire, it has 
very far exceeded my desert. To adduce all 
the eminent names of those, who have in- 
dulged me with their applause, would expose 
me to the suspicion of a vanity, of which I 
am unconscious : but I must say that, if I 
have not been so fortunate as to obtain the 



PREFACE. 23 

favour of Mr. Hayley, I have experienced 
some degree of consolation under the humili- 
ating circumstance, from the very partial re- 
gard with which this Life of Milton has been 
honoured by a William Gifford, a 
Samuel Parr, and a Charles Fox. To 
the last my voice cannot now reach ; and to 
the first I have already imperfectly ex- 
pressed my sense of obligation : but Doctor 
Parr must forgive me if I here state that 
the benefit, which this edition of my work 
has derived from the assistance of his judg- 
ment, has been so considerable as to give 
him a just claim to the thanks of my readers 
and myself. In a correspondence, which has 
passed between us, his deep and accurate 
erudition has supplied me with so many cu^ 
rious observations on the subject of Milton's 
Latin poetry that, if I could consent to ar- 
rogate the possessions of a friend for my 
own and to shine with the wealth of an- 
other, I could now make a splendid figure, 
and appear to be great beyond the design of 
my nature or the indulgence of my fortune. 



24 PREFACE. 

The high reputation of Dr. Parr for learning 
and for talents cannot acquire a line of ad- 
ditional elevation from my panegyric ; and 
when I affirm that his virtues as a man are 
equal to his merits as a scholar and a writer, 
I say only what his friends know to be true 
and what his enemies have not the confi- 
dence to deny. I speak of him on this oc- 
casion only to gratify myself, and he must 
pardon my justifiable vanity — for 

" Nee Phoebo gratior ulla 
Quam sibi quae Vari praescripsit pagina nomen."" 

Before I conclude, I must profess my 
thankfulness to the Reverend Doctor Disney, 
of the Hyde, for his very obliging commu- 
nication of the fine drawing, which has sup- 
plied ray work with its valuable frontispiece; 
and to the Reverend Mr. Matthews, Fellow 
of Jesus College, Oxford, for the kindness 
with which he has enabled me to gratify the 
curiosity of my readers with a most curious 
fac-simile of Milton's hand-writing. 

The drawing by Cipriani, from which my 



PREFACE. 25 

frontispiece is engraved, is of a bust, in the 
possession' of Dr. Disney, which was mo- 
del! d from my author immediately after he 
had completed his " Defence of the People of 
England ; " and the fac-simile is of the writ- 
ing of that great man, in a volume of his 
poems, published in 1645, which he pre- 
sented to Rouse, the librarian of the Bodleian, 
and which is now preserved in that grand re- 
pository of the literature of ages. 

May 11, 180p. 



PREFACE 

TO 

THE FIRST EDITION. 

More than two years have now elapsed since 
the Editors of the prose works of Milton fa- 
voured me with an application for the life of 
the author. With the diffidence, proper to 
my conscious mediocrity of talents, but with 
the alacrity, inspired by the wish of illustrat- 
ing a great and an injured character, I under- 
took, and soon sketched the rough draught of 
a large portion of the work. Unacquainted 
with the general progress of the publication, 
with which my biography was to be con- 
nected, I already looked forward to its early 
appearance, when it pleased the Almighty 
to visit me with an affliction of so much 
power as to oppress all my faculties, and, 
during a heavy interval of many successive 
months, to render me incapable of the 
slightest mental exertion. From this half- 



28 PREFACE TO 

animated state I was at length roused by 
a sense of the duty which I owed to my 
engagements, and by the fear of having in- 
jured, with the consequences of my weakness, 
those interests which I had bound myself by 
promise to promote. On the completion, 
however, of my work, I discovered, and not 
without some satisfaction, that my life of Mil- 
ton was yet to wait for its associate volumes 
from the press, and consequently that I had 
contracted no obligations for indulgence ei- 
ther to the editors or the public. Of all the 
parties, indeed, engaged in the transaction 
I alone seemed to have experienced any 
essential change of situation in the interval 
between the expected and the actual period 
of the publication. Eighteen months ago 
I felt an interest in the scene around me of 
which I must never again hope to be sen- 
sible ; and my pen, which now moves only 
in obedience to duty, was then quickened 
by the influences of feme. Eighteen months 
ago, like the man who visited the Rosicrusian 
tomb, I was surrounded with brilliant light: 



THE FIRST EDITION. 29 

but one blow dissolved the charm, broke the 
source of the illumination, and left me in se- 
pulchral darkness. It is only, however, in their 
reference to the execution of the following 
work that my calamities or my weaknesses 
can be of consequence to the public. If 
any passages then, in the present life of Mil- 
ton, should be noticed by the reader for pe- 
culiar deficiency in composition or in spirit, 
as he pronounces their merited condemnation 
let him be told that they were written by a 
father who, with a daughter, the delight and, 
alas! perhaps too much, the pride of his 
heart, has lost the great endearment of exist- 
ence; the exhilaration of his cheerful and the 
solace of his melancholy hour. 

Candour now requires me to speak of the 
literary assistance of which I have availed 
myself. If any vanity yet lingered in my 
bosom, in which every animating passion is 
nearly extinct, I might abundantly gratify the 
weakness by enumerating among my friends 
or acquaintance some of the first scholars and 
geniuses of the age: but of those, whose abi- 



30 PREFACE TO 

lity, if circumstances had permitted me to 
solicit its co-operation, would have imparted 
ornament and value to my production, my 
obligations for effective aid are limited to 
one. By the reverend Francis Wrang- 
ham, with whose talents and various erudi- 
tion the public is already acquainted, I have 
been favoured with translations of my au- 
thor's sixth elegy, of the greater part of his 
ode to Rouse, of more than one of his fami- 
liar epistles, and of many portions of his 
controversial pieces. These translations the 
reader would easily discover not to be mine: 
but to prevent his inquiry for the superior 
hand, from which they came, he will find 
them either acknowledged in their places, or 
specified at the foot of the present page. a 

a The second letter to Deodati. The conclusion of the " De- 
fence of the People of England:" " Hactenus quod initio insti- 
tueram/' &c. 

The two letters to Leo. Philaris, with exception to the quo- 
tation in the second of them from Apollonius, for the version 
of which I am accountable. 

The address to Cromwell from the " Second Defence:" 
" Tu igitur Oomuelle," &c. 

The conclusion of the " Second Defence:" te Ad me quod 
attmet," &c. 

The letter to Peter Heimbach after the plague in London. 



THE FIRST EDITION. 31 

I am bound also to profess myself indebted 
to this accomplished scholar and excellent 
friend for several hints of minute information 
by which I have considerably profited. 

The name of William Gifford, so as* 
sociated with praise in the conversation of 
the world, I have already taken occasion to 
introduce into the body of my volume: but 
I must not omit the present opportunity of 
mentioning that many of my last sheets, as 
they passed through the press, have been im- 
proved by the revision of this accurate critic, 
and most friendly man. 

On the plan and the execution of my 
work, it would not be my wish, if I pos- 
sessed the power to influence the determi- 
nation of the reader. It has been my object 
to present to him as complete a view of the 
subject, of which I have undertaken to treat, 
as was admitted by my materials or my 
powers; and to communicate to my pages 
all the variety and entertainment, of which 
they were susceptible, I have interspersed 
them with small pieces of criticism, with 



32 PREFACE TO 

translations and extracts from my author, 
and with occasional, though short views of 
the great contemporary occurrences in the 
state. 

For the political sentiments discoverable 
in my work I am neither inclined, nor, in- 
deed, able to offer an apology. They flow 
directly from those principles which I im- 
bibed with my first efforts of reflexion, which 
have derived force from my subsequent read- 
ing and observation, which have " grown 
with my growth, and strengthened with my 
strength/' If they should, therefore, unhap- 
pily be erroneous, my misfortune, as I fear, 
is hopelessly irremediable, for they are now 
so vitally blended with my thought and my 
feelings, that with them they must exist or 
must perish. The nature of these principles 
will be obviously and immediately apparent 
to my readers; for I have made too explicit 
an avowal of my political creed, with refer- 
ence to the civil and the ecclesiastical system 
of which I am fortunately a member, to be 
under any apprehensions of suffering by mis* 



THE FIRST EDITION. 33 

construction. If any man should affect to 
see more deeply into my bosom than I profess 
to see myself; or to detect an ambush of 
mischief which I have been studious to cover 
from observation, — that man will be the ob- 
ject not of my resentment but of my pity. 
I shall be assured that he suffers the infliction 
of a perverted head or a corrupt heart, and 
to that I shall contentedly resign him, after 
expressing a simple perhaps, but certainly a 
sincere wish for his relief from what may 
justly be considered as the severest of hu- 
man evils. 

I belong to a fallible species, and am 
probably to be numbered with the most fal- 
lible of its individuals: but I am superior to 
fraud, and am too proud for concealment. 
Truth, religious moral and political, is what 
alone I profess to pursue; and if I fancied 
that I discerned this prime object of my re- 
gard by the side of the Mufti or the grand 
Lama, of the wild demagogues of Athens or 
the ferocious tribunes of Rome, I would in- 

D 



34 PREFACE TO 

stantly recognize and embrace her. As I 
find her however, or find a strong and bright 
resemblance of her in my own country, I 
feel that I am not summoned to propitiate 
duty with the sacrifice of prudence, and that, 
conscious of speaking honestly, I ean enjoy 
the satisfaction of speaking safely. With* 
out acknowledging any thing in common, 
but a name, with that malignant and selfish 
faction which, surrendering principles to pas- 
sion, inflicted, in the earlier periods of the 
last century, some fatal wounds on the com- 
stitution; or with those men who in later 
times, abandoning their part} r and its spirit, 
have struggled to retain its honourable appeU 
lation, — I glory as I profess myself to be a 
whig, to be of the school of Somers and 
of Locke, to arrange myself in the same 
political class with those enlightened and 
virtuous statesmen who framed the Bill 
of Rights and the Act of Settlement, 
and who, presenting a crown, which they 
had wrested from a pernicious bigot and 



THE FIRST EDITION. 35 

his family, to the House of Hanover, gave 
that most honourable and legitimate of titles, 

the TREE CHOICE OF THE PEOPLE, to the 

Sovereign who now wields the imperial 
sceptre of Britain, 

Aug. 4. 1804, 



THE 



LIFE OF MILTON. 



Quem tu, Dea, tempore in omni 
Omnibus ornatum voluisti excellere rebus. Lucr. 



The author of the " Defence of the People 
of England" and of the " Paradise Lost" has 
engaged too much of the attention of the 
world not to invite its curiosity to the cir- 
cumstances of his conduct and the pecu- 
liarities of his mind. His biographers have 
been numerous; and every source of infor- 
mation respecting him has been explored with 
a degree of solicitous minuteness, which bears 
honourable testimony to the impression of his 
importance. Unfortunately however, the cha- 
racter which the great Milton sustained, on 
the political theatre of his calamitous times, 
has exposed him to the malignity of party; 
and this undying and sleepless a pest has been 

a <( Nee dulci declinat lumina sornno." 

Party resembles the " Fama malum/' the allegorical monster 
of Virgil, in more than this particular of sleeplessness^ for it is 



yCcx j~o<znnem JLousium uxoriLerisis 
QwLiofhecariiuru ,„ 

\_/)e ti/rv poemafum cimisso auem. tile, si 
mitti p o ■stuutpa.^ ur cum Mils aosrris tshfii/ffiof/et 
jpubzica, re/ioixere-f, flc/e Joctnnii Jiif&onf. 

Strophe i. 



Lf emetle culttt simplici qaudens liber, 
(yjronae Uc&t acmincL, 
JYlunaihe^ nirens non operostz, 
*Cuarn ma?tus cdtielit 
JUT/ tnitit o cirri 
Jectula tamen haua n 
J) um 2>aaus Jtusonu 
jNunc J)rLFa.nnica p 
J-nsons pQT>u/i,far/itof } /e: 
Jnaulsit 



imij -poeta?; 
usonuts nunc per 



loncoraJ 
1 1 re fa, lusitr 
eyius 



u ja^,J*0SZyL&Lc&zri pectine 0aun . 




umum v~Ljc tetiqlt 




58 &IFE OF MILTON. 

ever watchful to diminish the pride of his 
triumph, and to obscure that glory which it 
could not extinguish. 

During the immediate agitation of the 
political conflict, while interest is directly af- 
fected, passion will necessarily be excited ; 
and the weapons of passion arc seldom deli- 
cately fashioned or scrupulously employed. 
When the good or the great therefore are 
exposed to falsehood by contemporary ma- 
lignity, and are held up, with questioned vir- 
tues and imputed vices, to the execration 
instead of the applause of their species, we 
acknowledge the cause of the fact in the cor- 
ruption of man, and it forms the subject 
of our regret rather than of our surprise. But 
when, after a lapse of years sufficient to 
obliterate the very deepest trace of tempo- 
rary interest, we observe the activity of pas- 
sion stagnating into the sullenness of ran- 
cour; and see these heroes of our race sub- 
jected to the same injuriousness of malice 
which they had suffered from their personal 
adversaries, we stare at the consequence of 
unexpected depravity, and are astonished in 
as great a degree as we are afflicted. 

also " fieti praviqne tenax," — tenacious of falsehood and wrong j 
" et magnas territat urbes/' and it alarms and agitates great cities, 
breaking the repose and coucord of large communities of men. 



LIFE OF MILTON*,' SQ 

This remark is immediately to our pre- 
sent purpose: for this generation has wit- 
nessed an attempt on the character of our great 
writer, which would have done credit to the 
virulence of his own age. We have seen a 
new Salmasius, unimpelled by those motives 
which actuated the hireling of Charles, re- 
vive in Johnson; and have beheld the virtu- 
ous and the amiable, the firm and the con- 
sistent Milton, who appears to have acted* 
from the opening to the close of his life> — 

w As ever in his great Taskmaster's eye," 

exhibited in the disguise of a morose and a, 
malevolent being; — of a man, impatient him- 
self of the social subordination, yet oppressive 
to those within his power; of a wretch who, 
from pride austerity and prudence, was at 
once a rebel, a tyrant, and a sycophant. This 
atrocious libel has long since reflected dis- 
credit on its author alone; and its falsehood 
has been so clearly demonstrated by many 
able pens, and particularly by those of Black- 
burne b and of Hay ley/ that a new biographer 

b Francis Blackburne, Archdeacon of Cleveland, author of 
the Confessional. He published, without his name, in 1^80, 
some very able and acute remarks on Johnson's Life of Milton ; 
and they have very properly been republished in the " Memoirs of/ 
Thomas Hollis/ of which the Archdeacon was the compiler. 
Hayley's Life of "Milton . 



40 LIFE OF MILTON. 

of Milton might well be excused from ho- 
nouring it with his notice. But a regard to 
the cause of morals and the best interests of 
man seems to justify that indignation which 
would brand, again and again, the hand lifted 
in violation of the illustrious dead. The dead, 
indeed, are at rest from their labours; and, 
far from the reach of human malice, are in 
possession of their reward: but it is discou- 
raging to the weakness of the living, and con- 
sequently calculated to diminish the incentives 
to virtuous exertion, when it is perceived that 
no endowments of nature, no accumulations 
of knowledge, no just and sacred appro- 
priation of talents can secure the distinguished 
mortal fiom those insults of posthumous ca- 
lumny, which may bring him down from the 
eminence that he has gained, and level him 
with the vulgar of the earth. 

Though few, if any immediate references 
will be made in the following work to the 
modern biographers of Milton, to many of 
them the author must necessarily have con- 
tracted important obligations ; of some of 
which he is conscious, though of others he 
may be ignorant. He takes therefore this 
opportunity of making a general acknow- 
ledgement to those who have preceded him 
on his subject, and particularly to the ac- 



LIFE OF MILTON. 41 

curate Dr. Birch and the liberal Mr. Hay- 
ley/ More solicitous to avoid the charge of 
deficiency than that of obligation, he has 
freely availed himself of assistance from what- 
ever quarter it could be obtained; and if 
his circumstantial or imperfect detail should 
neither fatigue attention nor disappoint cu- 
riosity, his end will be accomplished and 
his wishes, of course, completely satisfied. 
His anxiety has been solely to display truth; 
and, not professing himself to be exempt from 
those prejudices which cling to every human 
being, he has been studious to prevent them 
from disturbing the rectitude of his line or 
from throwing their false tints upon his 
canvass. 

The lineage and ancestry of a great man 
are apt to engage inquiry; as we are desirous 
of knowing whether the virtue or the intel- 
lect, which we are contemplating, be a spring 
gushing immediately from the bosom of the 
earth, or a reservoir, (if the allusion may be 
permitted,) formed and supported by a long 

d Toland's Life of Milton is an able and spirited work. What- 
ever may be the demerits of this author in some essential re- 
spects, his merit as the biographer of our great Poet is certainly 
considerable, and entitles him to an honourable station among 
the asserters of historic truth. The admirers of Milton are under 
great obligations to him. 



42 LIFE OF MILTOtf. 

continued stream. Of the family of Milton 
nothing more is known than that it was 
respectable and antient ; long resident at 
Milton e in Oxfordshire, and possessed of 
property which it lost in the wars between 
the rival houses of York and Lancaster. The 
fortune alone of a female, who had married 
into it, preserved it at this crisis from indi- 
gence. The first individual of the family, of 
whom any thing is mentioned, is John Mil- 
ton, the grandfather of our author; and of 
him we are told nothing more than that he 
was under-ranger of the forest of Shotover in 
his native county ; that he was a zealous ca- 
tholic, and that he disinherited his son, whose 
name was also John, our author's father, for 
becoming a convert to the protestant faith. 
To whom the family property was bequeath- 
ed from the rio;ht heir, we are not informed : 
but we know that the son, on this disappoint- 
ment of fortune, left his station at Christ 
Church in Oxford, where he was prosecuting 
his studies, and sought the means of subsist- 
ence in London, from the profession of a 
scrivener; a profession which in those days 
united the distinct occupations of the law- 
agent, and the money-broker. 

e Near Halton and Thame. 



£1F£ OF MILTON* 43 

That he was not an ordinary man is evi- 
dent from many circumstances. Under the 
constant pressure of a profession, peculi- 
arly unfavourable to the cultivation of liberal 
knowledge or the elegant aits, his classi- 
cal acquirements seem to have been con- 
siderable; a*nd such w T as his proficiency in the 
science of music f that it entitled him to ho- 
nourable rank among the composers of his 
age. 

We are not informed of the precise time 
of his marriage; and there has even been a 
question respecting the maiden name and 
family of his wife. His grandson, Philips, 
who seems on this occasion to be the prefer- 
able authority, affirms that she was a Caston, 
of a family originally from Wales. We are 
assured that she was an exemplary g woman, 
and was particularly distinguished by her 
numerous charities. From this union sprang 
John, our author, Christopher and Anne. 
Of the two latter, Christopher, applying him- 
self to the study of the law, became a bencher 
of the Inner Temple, and at a very advanced 
period of his life was knighted and raised, by 

f Burney's Hist, of Music, vol. iii. p. 131. 
£ Londini sum natus, gencre honesto, pane viro integerrimo, 
?natre probatijgima et eleemosynis per viciniam poiissimum notd. 

Def, Sec. P. W. v. 230, 



44 LIFE OF MILTON. 

James the Second, first to be a baron of the 
Exchequer, and subsequently, one of the 
judges of the Common Pleas. During the 
civil war he followed the royal standard ; 
and effected his composition with the victors 
only by the prevailing interest of his bro- 
ther. Christopher Milton is asserted, by his 
nephew Philips, to have been a person of a 
modest and quiet temper, in whose estima- 
tion justice and virtue were preferable to 
worldly pleasure and grandeur: but he seems 
to have been also, as he is represented in 
another account, " a man of no parts or 
ability/' In his old age he retired from the 
fatigues of business, and closed in the coun- 
try a life of study and devotion. His only 
sister, Anne Milton, was given by her father 
in marriage, with a considerable fortune, to 
Mr. Edward Philips, a native of Shrewsbury; 
who, coming young to London, obtained in 
a course of years the lucrative place of se- 
condary in the Crown Office in Chancery: 
of the children, which she had by him, 
only two survived to maturity, Edward and 
John; the former of whom became the bio- 
grapher, after having, with his brother, beea 
the pupil of his uncle, our author. By a 
second husband, a Mr. Agar, she had two 
daughters, one of whom, Mary, died young; 



LIFE OF MILTON. 45 

and of the other, Anne, we know nothing 
more than that she survived till the year 1694. 
John Milton, the illustrious subject of 
our immediate notice, was born, at his father's 
house in Bread Street, on the 9 th and was 
baptized on the 20th of December, 1608. His 
promise of future excellence was made, as we 
are assured, at a very early period ; and the 
advantages which he derived from the at- 
tentions of a father, so qualified as his to 
discover and to appreciate genius, must ne- 
cessarily have been great. Every incitement 
to exertion and every mode of instruction, 
adapted to the disposition and the powers of 
the child, were unquestionably employed ; 
and no means, as we may be certain, were 
omitted to expand the intellectual Hercules 
of the nursery into the full dimensions of that 
mental amplitude for which he was intended. 
We know that a portrait of him, when he was 
only ten years of age, was painted by the 
celebrated Cornelius Janssen ; and, if we had 
not been positively told, on the authority of 
Aubrey , h that he was then a poet, we should 

h Aubrey, who is usually distinguished by the title of the 
Antiquarian, is the author of " Monumenta Britannica/' and 
of a MS. Life of Milton, preserved in the Mus. Ash. Gxon. He 
was personally acquainted with our poet, and from him Wood 
professes to derive the materials of his account of Milton. It is 
but fair to sta^ that I owe my acquaintance with Aubrey prin- 



46 LIFE OF MILTON*. 

have inferred that the son, who was made the 
object of so flattering a distinction by a fa- 
ther, in competent indeed but by no means 
in affluent circumstances, could not have 
been a common child. 1 

" My father destined me," (our author 
says,) when I was } r et a little boy, to the study 
of elegant literature, and, so eagerly did I seize 
on it that, from my twelfth year, I seldom 
quitted my studies for my bed till the middle 
of the night. This proved the first cause of 
the ruin of my eyes; in addition to the natural 
weakness of which organs, 1 was afflicted 
with frequent pains in my head. When these 
maladies could not restrain my rage for learn- 
ing, my father provided that I should be 
daily instructed in some school abroad, or 

cipally to Mr. Warton; who speaks of the " Monumenfa Bri- 
tannica," as a very solid and rational work, and vindicates its 
author from the charge of fantastical, except on the subjects of 
chemistry and ghosts. Aubrey however, on the whole, is a weak 
and old-womanish writer j whose authority, on the present .subject 
at least, rt to be received with caution, and only where no other 
can be obtained. 

" » Pater me puerulum humaniorum literarum studiis desti- 
navit; quas ita avide arripui, ut ab anno aetatis duodecimo vix 
unquam ante mediam noctem a lucubrationibus cubitum discede** 
rem ; quae prima oculorum pernicies fuit : quorum ad naturaleni 
debilitatem accesserant et crebri capitis dolores; quae omnia cum 
discendi impetum non retardarent, et in ludo literario, et sub aliis 
domi magistris erudiendum quotidie curavit." Defen. Secun. 
P. W. v. 230. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 4f 

by domestic tutors at home/' How great are 
the obligations of Britain and of the world to 
such a father, engaged in the assiduous and 
well-directed cultivation of the mind of such 
a son! 

But the reward of the father was ample; 
and no one, but a parent of taste and sensi- 
bility under circumstances of some resem- 
blance, can form any estimate of the grati- 
fication which he must have felt from his 
child's increasing progress, and from the 
prospects which it gradually opened. How 
exquisite must have been his sensations on 
receiving, in that admirable Latin poem which 
is addressed to him, the fullest evidence of 
the learning, genius, taste, piety and grati- 
tude which had unfolded beneath his eye! 
How pleased must he have been to accept 
immortality from the hand which he had 
himself fostered-Ho be assured of visiting 
posterity as the benefactor of his illustrious 
offspring, and of being associated, as it were, 
with him in the procession and expanding 
pomp of his triumph! We may imagine with 
what pleasure a father would read the fol- 
lowing elegant compliment to his own pecu- 
liar talent from the pen of his accomplished 
?uid poetic spn : 



43 LIFE OF MILTON. 

Nee tu perge, precor, sacras contemnere Musas ; 
Nee vanas inopesqoe puta, quarum ipse peritus 
Munere, mille sonos numeros componis ad aptosj 
Miilibus et vocem modulis variare canoram 
Docuis, Arionii merito sis no-minis haeres. 
Nunc tibi quid minim si me genuisse poetam 
Contigerit, charo si tarn prope sanguine juncti 
Cognatas artes, studiumque affine sequamur? 
Ipse vol ens Phcebus se dispertire duobus, 
Altera dona mihi, dedit altera dona parenti j 
Dividuumque Deum genitorque puerque tenemus, 

Nor you affect to scorn the Aonian quire, 

Bless'd by their smiles and glowing with their fire. 

You 1 who by them inspired, with art profound 

Can wield the magic of proportion'd sound : 

Through thousand tones can teach the voice to stray, 

And wind to harmony its mazy way, — 

Arion's tuneful heir: — then wonder not 

A poet child should be by you begot. 

JMy kindred blood is warm with kindred flame; 

And the son treads his father's track to fame. 

Phcebus controlls us with a common sway j 

To you commends his lyre,— to me his lay: 

Whole in each bosom makes his just abode, 

With child and sire the same, though varied God.— 

This must have been most acceptable; 
and yet, perhaps, more gratifying to the heart 
of a parent would be that effusion of filial 
affection with which the poem concludes. 

At tibi, chare pater, postquam non aequa merenti 
. Posse referre datur, nee dona rependere factis, 
Sit memorasse satis, repetitaque munera grato 
Percensere animo, fidaeque reponere menti. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 49 

E£ vos, O nostri, juvenilia carmina, lusus, 
Si modo perpetuos sperare audebitis annos, 
Et domini superesse rogo, lucemque tueri, 
Nee spisso rapient oblivia nigra sub orco; 
Forsitan has laudes, decantatumque parentis 
Nomen, ad exemplum, sero servabitis aevo. 

But since, dear sire, my gratitude can find 

For all your gifts no gifts of equal kind: 

Since my large heart my bounded fortunes wrong, — 

Accept, for all, the record of my song: 

O take the love, that strives to be express'^ ! 

O take the thanks, that swell within my breast! 

And you, sweet triflings of my youthful state, 

If strains like you can hope a lasting date; 

Unconscious of your mortal master's doom, 

If ye maintain the day nor know the tomb, 

From dark forgetfulness, as time rolls on, 

Your power shall snatch the parent and the son: 

And bid them live, to teach succeeding days 

-How one could merit, and how one could praise! l 

Some part of our author's early educa- 
tion was committed to the care of Mr. Tho- 
mas Young, a puritan minister and $ native, 
as Aubrey affirms, pf Essex: but at what pre- 
cise period this connexion began or ended 
is not now to be ascertained. It has beexi 
deemed probable that Young continued in 
his office till the time when, in consequence 
of his religious opinions, he was compelled 
to retire to the continent, where he obtained 
the appointment of minister to the British 
merchants at Hamburgh. Young's depar- 

1 The reader will find an entire translation of this poem at 
the end of the volume. 

E 



50 LIFE OF MILTON. 

ture from England is stated to have taken 
place in 1623, when his pupil is supposed 
to have been placed, in his fifteenth year, at 
St. Paul's school. But this statement seems 
to be inaccurate, as his pupil, in a letter 
dated from Cambridge in 1628, promises him 
a visit at his country house in Suffolk, and 
compliments him on the independency of 
mind with which he maintained himself, like 
a Grecian sage or an old Roman consul, on 
the profits of a small farm. m 

m " Rus tuum accersitus, sjmul ac ver adoleverit, libenter adve- 
niam ad capessendas anni tuique non minus colloquii delicias : et 
ab urbano strepitu subducam me paulisper ad Stoam tuam Ice- 
norunij tanquam ad celeberrimam illam Zenonis porticum aut 
Ciceronis Tusculanum, ubi tu, in re modica regio sane animo, 
veluti Serranus aliquis aut Curius, \n agello tuo placide regnas."* 
Mr. Warton imagines that Young returned in or before this 
year (1(528) : but Laud's persecution of the puritans was now at 
its height j ancl if Young formerly fled from this persecution, he 
must at the time in question have returned by stealth, and could 
hardly have resided openly upon his Suffolk living of Stow-Market, 
As the Iceni are supposed to have inhabited the counties of Norfolk 
and Cambridge as well as that of Suffolk, the expression of" Stoam 
tuam Icenorum/' can be confined to Suffolk only by a reference 
to Young's living of Stow-Market. Yv^hen Milton used the word 
4C Stoa," on this occasion, and forced it from its proper station 
next to " Zenonis," could he playfully intend an allusion to his 
tutor's Stow? I suspect that he did. It is probable that Young 
did not return from the continent till about the end of 1640 or the 
beginning of the following year, when the Long Parliament of- 
fered to him and to his brother exiles protection from the tyranny 
$)f the High Commission and the Star-Chamber courts. Soon 

* Epis, Thomue Junio Jul. 2. 162$. P. W. vi. 112. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 51 

w Availing myself" (Milton writes to his 
late tutor) " of your invitation to your coun- 
try bouse, I will with pleasure come to you 
as soon as the spring is further advanced, 
that I may at once enjoy the delightfulness 
of the season and that of your conversation. 
I will then retire for a short time, as I would 
to the celebrated porch of Zeno or to the 
Tusculan villa of Cicero, from the tumult of 
the town to your Suffolk Stoa, where you, 
like another Serranus or Curius, in moderate 
circumstances but with a princely soul, reign 
tranquilly in the midst of your little farm." — 
In the same year however, we find him on 
the continent, and followed by the affection 
and gratitude of his pupil in a Latin elegy of 
much beauty and poetic merit. 



after this period, we find him engaged in controversy, as one of 
the writers of the pamphlet called Smectymnuus, against bishop 
Hall and archbishop Usher. He was a preacher at Duke's Place, 
and was nominated one of the famous Assembly of Divines, 
whom the Parliament appointed in 1643 for the management of 
religion. On the visitation of the University of Cambridge by 
the earl of Manchester, he was established, on the ejection of 
Dr. Richard Stern, in the Mastership of Jesus College, and re- 
tained it, with much credit to himself and advantage to the 
college, till his refusal of subscription to the engagement occa- 
sioned his expulsion from the office. He died, and was buried, 
as Mr. Warton in one of his notes in his edition of Milton's ju- 
venile poems informs us, at S tow-Market, of which parish he 
had been Vicar during thirty years. 



53 LIFE OF MILTON. 

But at whatever period Young retired 
to the continent or resigned his charge in 
Mr. Milton's house, it is certain that before 
his removal to the University the youthful 
Milton passed some interval of study at St. 
Paul's school, under the direction at that 
time of Mr. Alexander Gill. Three of our 
author's familiar letters are addressed to 
Alexander Gill, his master's son and assistant 
in the school, with whom he seems to have 
contracted a warm and lasting friendship. 
Their correspondence principally respects 
the communication of some pieces of com- 
position, and strongly attests the mutual re? 
spect of the parties, founded, as we cannot 
reasonably doubt, on their mutual conviction 
of great literary attainments. 1 " 

A powerful intellect, exerted with un- 
wearied industry apd undiverted attention, 
must necessarily possess itself of its object; 
and we know that qyr author, when he left 

p Alexander Gill was Usher to bis father, and afterwards pro- 
moted to the place of upper master. He was so rigid a discipli- 
narian that he was removed for extreme severity from his office. 
He wrote both in verse and prose with considerable taste ; and 
Mr. Warton mentions a Latin epitaph from his pen, which bears 
testimony to the uncommon purity of his Latin composition,. 
Having exposed himself, by means of which we are now ignorant* 
to the resentment of B, Jonson, be was made by that coarse writer 
the subject of a virulent and brutal satire. 



"life or MILTON. 53 

this school in his seventeenth year for the 
University* was already an accomplished 
scholar. Ardent in his love of knowledge, he 
was regardless, as we have observed, of plea- 
sure and even of health when they came 
into competition with the prevailing passion 
of his soul, and we are consequently not 
much surprised by the extraordinary and 
brilliant result which soon flashed upon the 
world. 

It was at this early period of his life, as 
we may confidently conjecture, that he im- 
bibed that spirit of devotion which actuated 
his bosom to his latest moment upon earth: 
and we need not extend our search beyond 
the limits of his own house for the foun- 
tain from which the living influence was 
derived. Great must have been that sense of 
religious duty, and considerable that degree 
of theological knowledge which could induce 
the father to abjure those errors in which he 
had been educatedi sanctioned as they were 
by paternal authority and powerfully en- 
forced by the persuasion of temporal interest. 
The important concessions which he was 
compelled to make to religious principle 
would necessarily attach it the more closely 
to his heart; and he would naturally be soli- 
citous to stamp upon the tender bosom of his 



54 LIFE OF MILTON. 

son that conviction and feeling of duty 
which were impressed so deeply on his own. 
He intended indeed to consecrate his son 
to the ministry of the church, and for this 
reason also he would be the more anxious 
decidedly to incline him with the bias of 
devotion. The sentiments and the warmth, 
thus communicated to the mind of the young 
Milton, would, no doubt, be strengthened by 
the lessons and the example of his preceptor. 
Young; in whom religion seems to have been 
exalted to enthusiasm, and who submitted, 
as we know, to some very trying privations 
on the imperious requisition of his con- 
science. But from whatever source the fervid 
spirit proceeded, it seems in its action on 
our. author's mind to have increased the 
power as well as to have given the direction; 
to have invigorated the strong, enlarged the 
capacious, and elevated the lofty. We are 
unquestionably indebted to it not merely 
for the subject but for a great part also of 
the sublimity of the Paradise Lost. 

On the 12th of February 1624-5, he was 
entered a pensioner at Christ's college, q Cam- 

<i The entry of Milton's admission, in Christ's College, is in 
the following words : ' ' Johannes Milton, Londinensis, films Jo- 
hannis, institutes fuit in literarum elementis sub M ro Gill, Gym- 
nasii Paulini praefecto. Admissus est Pensionarius minor, Feb. 12, 
1624, sub M ro Chappell, solvitque pro ingressu 10s." 



LIFE OF MILTON. 55 

bridge ; and was committed to the tuition of 
Mr. William Chappell, the reputed author 
of the " Whole Duty of Man;" r and after- 
wards, in succession, provost of Trinity col- 
lege, Dublin, dean of Cashel, and bishop of 
Cork and Ross. 3 

The conduct of the young Milton had 

For this and for other information on my subject I am in- 
debted to my friend,, the Reverend G. Borlase, B. D. the liberal and 
most respectable registrer of the University of Cambridge. 

r This celebrated devotional work has been attributed to va- 
rious hands: but of the numerous claimants to the honour of it* 
production, it seems with the greatest probability to be assigned 
to Dorothy, daughter of Thomas, Lord Coventry, and wife of Sir 
John Pakington, Bart, in the reigns of James the first and of the 
two Charles's. 

s As a respectable writer, (with the signature of S. C. in the 
Gentleman's Magazine* for July, 1806,) expresses surprise at my 
having omitted to mention the name of a subsequent tutor of Mil- 
ton's, a Mr. Tovey, who is noticed by Aubrey, I will now tran- 
scribe from Aubrey's MS. the passage in which this second tutor 
is mentioned, and, with a few remarks on it, will show the little 
credit to which it is entitled, and consequently the propriety with 
which it was formerly disregarded by A.Wood and lately by 
myself. Aubrey professes to have gained his information front 
that old dotard, Sir Christopher Milton, the brother of the poet. 
" His" (our author's) first tutor there," (at Cambridge) " wag 
Mr. Chappell, from whom receiving some unkindness, (whipt him,) 
he was afterwards, though it seemed against the rules of the col- 
lege, transferred to the tuition of one Mr. Tovell" (not Tovey) ; 
who died parson of Lutterworth." Now the records of Mil- 
ton's college notice the name of a Mr. Nathaniel Tovey as one of 
its fellows: but give no intimation of his having succeeded to the 
rectory of Lutterworth, or of Milton's having been transferred tc» 

* Vol. LXXVI. 595. 



56 LIFE OF MILTON. 

hitherto been exempted from censure. Dis^ 
tinguished indeed, as it was, by zeal for 

his tuition from that of Mr. Chappell's. With respect to the 
whipping, which is assigned as the cause of Milton's change of 
tutors, ihe alleged fact may be rejected on the most satisfactory 
evidence. Not to observe that this punishment is asserted by 
some of Milton's enemies to have been inflicted on him by the 
hand of Dr. Bainbridge himself, the master of the college, who is 
said to have been a stern disciplinarian; this species of correction 
was always inflicted by the deans of the college and neither by 
the tutors nor the master, and, what is more immediately and 
directly to our purpose, was restricted by the University statute* 
altogether to boys, as they are distinguished from young men; or, 
in other words, to those who had not attained the age of pu- 
berty. The words of the penal statute in question are, u Mule- 
tetur, &c. si adultus : alioquin virga corrigatnrj" and whether 
Milton, who was in his seventeenth year when he entered at 
the University, could be regarded on any construction of this 
statute as liable to the punishment of the rod, shall be sub- 
mitted to my readers to determine. I must believe that they 
v/ho drew up the University statutes, and they who were to 
enforce them were too accurate in their learning not to em- 
ploy their language with precision when they wrote, or not to 
understand it with correctness when they read: adultus, ac- 
cording to Stephens, whose explanation of the word is supported 
by the most unquestionable authorities, is, qui adolevit, i. e. crevit 
ad setatem quae adolescentia diciturj and adolescentia is afterwards- 
defined to be prima aetas hominis post pueritiam. — Adolescens in 
jure dicitur, Qui inter annum decimum quartum etvicesimum quin- 
turn aetatem agit. Adultus, therefore, is a young man between 
the ages of fourteen and five and twenty. In Milton's time, and 
before it, it was usual to send boys under the age of puberty to the 
University j and that these hoys should be still subjected to the 
common mode of discipline in the subordinate schools cannot be a 
cause of wonder or of reasonable censure. Dr. Johnson's concern 
and shame therefore, on the occasion of Milton's supposed punish- 
ment, might on every account very properly have been spared- 



LIFE OF MILTOX. 57 

Study and contempt of pleasure, by obe- 
dience to his masters and by piety to his pa- 
rents, it might be regarded as not open to 
attack and in no way to be made the subject 
of malevolence: it was indebted however for 
its immunity to other circumstances perhaps 
than to those of its innocence and excellence* 
It continued, as we have the strongest rea- 
sons to believe, equally pure and exemplary 
throughout the subsequent stages of his life: 
but no sooner did he tread the threshold 
of manhood, and begin to offend by the 
exhibition of novel opinions and strong cen- 
sures, than he became the object of that 
enmity which, pursuing him with detraction 
to his grave, has in later times disturbed 
his ashes and endeavoured to deform his 
memory, 

Of his conduct and the treatment which 
he experienced in his college much has been 
asserted and much been made the subject of 
dispute. His enemies in his own days, (a 
son of bishop Hall is supposed to have been 
the immediate advancer of the charge,) ac- 
cused him of having been vomited, after an 
inordinate and riotous youth, out of the Uni- 
versity; and his adversaries in the present 
age, inflamed with all the hate of their pre- 
decessors, have pretended to prove, from 



58 LIFE OF MILTON. 

some vague expressions in one of his own 
poems, that the slander, though completely 
overthrown at the time of its first production, 
was not altogether unsupported by truth. 
The lines, supposed to contain the proof in 
question, are the following which have been 
so frequently cited from the first of his ele- 
gies to his friend, C. Deodati: 

Jam nee arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum 5 

Nee dudum vetiti me laris angit amor : 
Nuda nee arva placenta umbrasque negantia molles : 

Quam male Phcebicolis convenit ille locus ! 
Nee duri libet usque minas perferre magistrij 

Caeteraque ingenio non subeunda meo. 
Si sit hoc 1 exilium patrios adiisse penates 

Et vacuum curis otia grata sequi : 

1 Our author seems in this place to be guilty of a false quan- 
tity, and to begin his hexameter very unwarrantably with a cre- 
tic. Terentianus Maurus accuses Virgil of the same inaccuracy in 
the line " Solus hie inflexit sensus," &c. affirming, with the old 
grammarians, that hie and hoc were formerly written with two 
c's, hicc, hocc, being contracted from hicce and hocce, and were 
always long. Vossius on the contrary asserts that these pro- 
nouns were long only when they were written with the double 
cc. — " Ad quantitarem hujus pronominis quod attinet, pro- 
ducebant et hie et hoc veteres quando per duplex c scribebant 
hicc vel hocc, abjecto, ej corripiebant cum c simplex scripsere. 
Art. Gram. 29. Of a short hie more than one instance may be 
produced: " Hie vir hie est, tibi quern promitti saepius audis; 
but not one, as far as my recollection is accurate, of a short hoc. 
<c Hoc illud, germana, fuit." " Hie labor hoc opus est." " Hoc 
erat, alma parens." — " Hoc erat experto frustra Varrone." — 
" Hoc erat in votis." My friend, Dr. Parr, however, has sug- 
gested that, hoc, is to be found short in the comic poets j and 



LIFE OF MILTON. 59 

Non ego vel profugi nomen sortemque recuso 
Laetus et exilii conditione fruor. 



lias referred me to two places, one in Plautus and one in Terence, 
where it certainly occurs with this quantity. If this authority, from 
poetry neither epic, elegiac nor lyric, can save Milton in this in- 
stance, it will be well ; and one sin against prosody will be struck 
from his account. Salmasius, in his abusive reply to " The De- 
fence of the People of England,' charges our author's Latin verse 
with many of these violations of quantity, and the accusation is 
repeated, as I shall remark in the proper place, by N. Heinsius. 
Though Milton's Latin metre be not proof against rigorous inquisi- 
tion, yet. are its offences against quantity very few — not more, per- 
haps, (if the scazons, addressed to Salsilli, which seem to be con- 
structed on a false principle, and some of the lines in the ode to 
Rouse, which appear to have been formed in defiance of every prin- 
ciple, be thrown out of the question,) than four or, at the most, five, 
of a nature not to be disputed. Of these I shall notice two in the 
Damon, one of them evidently a slip of the pen, as in a former 
instance he had observed the right quantity, and the other an un- 
warrantable licence rather than a fault of this specific description. 
In the Idea Platonica, he is guilty of shortening the second syl- 
lable of, sempiternus, which beyond all controversy- is long 5 and 
in his poem to his Father he makes the last syllable of, ego, long, 
When it is unquestionably short ; though here perhaps he might be 
justified in lengthening it, as the ictus of the verse falls on it. 
Of Academia, in the second Elegy, he shortens the penult in oppo- 
sition to the uniform practice of the Greeks, and not sanctioned 
by any authorities though countenanced, as Dr. Parr has acutely 
discriminated, by some examples among the Latins; and lastly, 
in the Alcaic ode on the death of Dr. Goslyn, he has left the inter- 
jective, O, open in a situation in which it is never found open in 
the Roman classics. When, contrary to the usage of Virgil, 
Horace, &c. he lengthens the first syllable of Britonicum, in the 
Damon, he is supported by the authority of Lucretius, vi. ] 104. 
if Nam quid Britannis ccelum differre putamusj" and when he 
makes the final syllable of temere short in — i( Quid temere violas 



60 LIFE Of MILTON: 

Extinct my love of mansions late denied, 
No wish now leads me to Cam's reedy side : 

non nocenda \ numina," he is justified not only by analog}' but 
by the sole authority which can be produced on the occasion, and 
as such to be admitted, the authority of Seneca, who in two places 
uses it as short — " Sic temere jactae colla perfundant corns." 
Hippo. 392. 

" Pondusque et artus temere congestos date." Id. — 1244. 

For these instances I am indebted to Dr. Parr. By Gray this 
syllable of temere is improperly made long — Hospiti ramis temere 
jacentem. I have omitted to state that in the iambics on the death 
of Felton, Bishop of Ely, Neobolen is substituted without autho- 
rity for Neobiilen. 

This I believe to be an accurate and full statement of Milton's 
real and imputed transgressions of Latin prosody in all its just 
severity; and this will vindicate me for saying that his offences of 
this description are few, and not sufficient to support in its full 
extent the charge which has been brought against him. I am 
aware however, though the circumstance was not in the con- 
templation either of Salmasius or of Heinslus, that Milton has 
frequently sinned against the celebrated metrical canon, (ad- 
vanced by Dawes, and acknowledged by the chief scholars of the 
present age,) which determines that in Latin prosody a short 
vowel is necessarily lengthened by the immediate sequence, 
though in a distinct word, of sc, sp, and st. But, though I must 
thus dissent from the opinion of Dr. Parr, from which it is im- 
possible to dissent without a feeling of trembling diffidence, I 
Cannot profess myself to be certain of the authenticity of a law 
which has not been invariably observed by the greatest masters of 
Roman numbers in the purest age of Roman taste — of a law, in 
short, which has been broken by Catullus, by Horace, by Virgil, 
by Ovid, and by Propertius. To get rid of an infraction cf this 
rule by Virgil, its supporters are reduced to the violent expedient 
of erasing the offending line without the authority of a single MS. 
and when Horace with his fine judgment and nice ear, is guilty, 
as he frequently is, of this imputed crime, the circumstance is attri- 
buted to the laxity of the numbers, the " carmina sermoni pro- 



LIFE OF MILTON. 6l 

Where genial shade the naked fields refuse j 
(Ah most unfriendly to the courted Muse!) 



priora," which he professes to employ. Well — be it so: but 
what is to be said of the following instances, which have not been 
hitherto produced, of a neglect of this rule by other writers of the 
golden age of Roman poetry, and particularly by the learned Pro- 
pertius; in whom more instances of a similar nature are to be 
found 2 

" Testis erit magnis vertutibus unda Scamandri." Catul. 

* f Brachia spectavi sacris admorsa colubris." Proper. 

" Consuluitque stryges nostro de sanguine, et in me." Id. 

" Tuque O Minoa venundata Scylla figura." Galli Eleg. 

If this last instance, as brought from a work the authenticity 
of which has been suspected by Broukhusius and others, should 
be thrown out of the question, examples enough have been ad-? 
duced, (and their number might easily be increased,) to vindicate 
Milton when, with many of the first-rate scholars of the age just 
past, he disregards a rule of prosody which, whatever may he 
advanced in its support by the great scholars of our own times, 
must be considered as possessing at the most only doubtful autho- 
rity. Though Homer, if he may be allowed to have written his 
Jliad or to have known the orthography of one of the rivers of 
the Troad, has frequently transgressed this rule, it was very gene- 
rally observed by the Greek poets : and by the poets of what has 
been called the silver age of Roman composition, it has not, as far 
as I can discover, been eyer violated. It would seem that to a 
Greek or a Roman ear the immediate sequence of the strong con? 
sonants in question suspended the voice on the preceding short 
vowel j but not in that degree as to make inattention to its effect 
an unpardonable offence against the harmony of the verse. 

I have occasionally hinted that Milton's Latin prose composition 
is not altogether faultless : but its faults are few and trivial) and 
to dwell on them would expend time for an insufficient object. 
On his Greek composition, of which the errors are more numerous 
and perhaps of greater magnitude, I have purposely forborne to 
offer any remarks, as that accomplished scholar and very acute 



62 LITE OF MILTON. 

And ill my soul a master's threats can bear, 
With all the fretting of the pedant's war. 
If this be banishment — all cares aloof — 
To live my own beneath a father's roof — 
Still let an idle world condemn or not, 
Mine be a truant's name, — an exile's lot. 

On u this passage, which probably would 
not have been published if it had referred to 

critic, the Reverend Doctor Charles Burney, has completely ex- 
hausted the subject. When the almost infinite niceties of the 
Greek language are considered, and it is recollected that the great 
Sir William Jones, and even Dawes, the most accurate Grecian 
perhaps whom this island till the present day has ever produced, 
have not in every instance been able to observe them, the lapses 
in Milton's Greek composition will possibly be regarded as venial, 
and not to be admitted in diminution of the fame of his Greek 
erudition. 

11 It may be proper to give a literal translation of these lines, 
that the English reader may form his own judgment on the ex- 
tent of their testimony. " Now neither am I anxious to revisit 
reedy Cam, nor does the love of my lately forbidden college give 
me uneasiness. Fields naked and destitute of soft shades do not 
please me. How ill-suited to the worshippers of Phoebus is 
such a place! Neither do I like always to bear the threats of a 
hard master, and other things which are not to be submitted to 
by a mind and temper like mine. If it be banishment to return 
to a father's house, and there, exempt from cares, to possess de r 
lightful leisure, I will not refuse even the name and the lot of 
a fugitive, but exult ingly enjoy the condition of an exile." As 
\t may amuse some of my readers to see the entire elegy, I will 
transcribe it in its complete state, with a translation very inferior 
to the merits of the original, 

ELEG. I AD CAROLUM DEODATUM, 

Tandem, chare, tuae mihi pervenere tabellae., 

Pertulit et voces nuncia charta tuas : 
Pertulit occidua Devae Cestrensis ab ora, 

Vergivium prono qua petit amne salum. 



LITE OF MILTON. 63 

any transactions dishonourable to the writer, 
is rested the whole support of the accusa- 

Multum, crede, juvat terras aluisse remotas 
Pectus amans nostri, tamque fidele caput ; 
Quodque mihi lepidum tellus longinqua sodalem 

Debet, at unde brevi reddere jussa veUt. 
Me tenet urbs reflua quam Thamesis alluit unda, 

Meque nee invitum patria dulcis habet. 
Jam nee arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum, 

Nee dudum vetiti me laris angit amor. 
Nuda nee arva placent, umbrasque negantia molles t 

Quam male Phosbicolis convenit ille locus! 
Nee duri libet usque minas perferre magistri, 

Caeteraque ingenio non subeunda meo. 
Si sit hoc exilium patrios adiisse penates, 

Et vacuum curis otia grata sequi, 
Non ego vel profugi nomen sortemve recuse, 

Laetus etexilii conditione fruor. 
O, utinam vates nunquam graviora tulisset, 

Ille Tomitano fiebilis exul agro : 
Non tunc lonio quicquam cessisset Homero, 

Neve foret victo laus tibi prima, Maro. 
Tempora nam licet hie placidis dare libera Musis* 

Et totum rapiunt me, mea vita, libri. 
Excipit hinc fessum sinuosi pompa theatri, 

Et vocat ad plausus garrula scena suos. 
Seu catus auditur senior, sen prodigus haeres, 
Sen procus, aut posita casside miles adest : 
Sive decennali foccundus lite patronus 
Detonat inculto barbara verba foro. 
Saepe vafer gnato succurrit servus amanti, 

Et nasum rigidi fallit uhique patris: 
Saepe novos illic virgo mirata calores 

Quid sit amor nescit, dum quoque nescit, amat. 
Sive cruentatum furiosa Tragoedia sceptrum 

Quassat, et efrusis crinibus ora rotat. 
Et dolet, et specto, juvat et spectasse dolendo, 
Interdum et lacrymis dulcis amaror inest : 



64 LIFE 0£ MILTON. 

tion, preferred against our author's college 
life, from his own to the present times. The 



Sen puer infelix indelibata reliquit 

Gaudia, et abrupto flendus amore cadit : 
Seu ferus e tenebris iterat Styga criminis ultor^ 

Conscia funereo pectora torre movens : 
Seu mceret Pelopeia domus, seu nobilis HI, 

• Aut luit incestos aula Creontis avos. 
Sed neque sub tecto semper, nee in urbe latemusj; 

Irrita nee nobis tempora veris eunt. 
Nos quoque lucus habet vicina consitus ulmo, 

Atque suburbani nobilis umbra loci. 
Ssepius hie, blandas spirantia sidera flammas, 

Virgineos videas praeteriisse choros. 
Ah quoties dignae stupui miracula formae, 

Quae possit senium vel reparare Jovis ! 
Ah quoties vidi superantia lumina gemmas, 

Atque faces quotquot volvit uterque polus! 
Collaque bis vivi Pelopis quae brachia vincant, 

Quaeque fluit puro nectare tincta via ! 
£t decus eximium frontis, tremulosque capillos, 

Aurea quae fallax retia tendit Amor! 
Pellacesque genas, ad quas hyacinthina sordet 

Purpura, et ipse tui floris. Adoni, rubor \ 
Cedite, laudatae totter. Heroides olim, 

Et quaecunque vagum cepit arnica Jovem. 
Cedite, Achaemeniae turrita fronte puellae, 

Et quot Susa colunt, Memnoniamque Ninon. 
Vos etiam Danaae fasces submittite nymphae, 

Et vos Iliacae, Romuleaeque nurus : 
Nee Pompeianas Tarpeia Musa columnas 

Jactet, et Ausoniis plena theatra stolis. 
Gloria virginibus debetur prima Britannisj 

Extera, sat tibi sit, foemina, posse sequi. 
Tuque urbs Dardaniis, Londinum, structa colonis, 

Turrigerum late conspicienda caput, 



LIFE OF MILTON. 65 

author of the " Modest Confutation/' (whom 
Milton believed to be the son of bishop Hall,) 

Tu nimium felix intra tua moenia claudis 

Quicquid formosi pendulus orbis habet. 
Non tibi tot coelo scintillant astra sereno, 

Endymioneae turba ministra deas, 
Quot tibi, conspicuas formaque auroque, puellae 

Per raedias radiant turba videnda vias. 
Creditur hue geminis venisse invecta columbis 

Alma pharetrigero milite cincta Venus ; 
Huic Cnidon, et riguas Simoentis fiumine valles, 

Huic Paphon, et rosearn posthabitura Cypron, 
Ast ego, dum pueri sink indulgentia caeci, 

Mcenia quam subito linquere fausta paroj 
Et vitare procul malefidse infamia Circes 

Atria, divini molyos usus ope. 
Stat quoque juncosas Cami remeare paludes., 

Atque iterum raucae murmur adire scholae. 
Interea fidi parvum cape munus amici, 

Paucaque in alternos verba coacta modos, 

ELEGY I. TO CHARLES DEODATI. 

At length, my friend, the missive paper came, 
Warm with your words, and hallow'd by your name I 
Came from those fields which Cestrian Deva laves,_ 
As prone he hurries to Ierne's waves. 
I joy to find my friendship thus confest, 
Though regions part us, foster'd in your breast : 
I joy, believe rae^ that a distant shore 
Owes me a comrade^ — and must soon restore. 
Pleased with my native city, still 1 dwell 
Where Thames's restless waters sink and swell. 
Extinct my love of mansions, late denied, 
No wish now leads me to Cam's reedy side: 
Where genial shade the naked fields refuse; 
(Ah most unfriendly to the courted Muse!) 



66 LIFE OF MILTON. 

confesses that he had no certain notice of his 
opponent, further than what he had gathered 

And ill my soul a masters threats can bear, 
With all the fretting of the pedant's war. 
If this be banishment, — all cares aloof, 
To live my own beneath a father's roof, 
Still,— let an idle world condemn or not,— 
Mine be a truant's name, an exile's lot. 

had no weightier ills oppress'd the doom 
Of the sad bard in Tomi's wintry gloom; 
Great Homer's self had seen a rival lay, 
And Maro had resign'd his victor bay: 
For here the Muses lead my hours along, 
And all my day is study or is song. 

Then tired, I hasten where the scene commands 

The crowded theatre's applauding hands : , 

Whether it's fictions show, with mimic truth, 

A cautious parent, or a spendthrift youth ; 

A lover, or a peaceful son of war ;— 

Or, bawling the base jargon of the bar, 

Pompous, and pregnant with a ten -years' cause,— 

The prating, puzzled pleader of the laws. 

There oft a servant aids the doating boy 

To elude his sire, and gain his promised joy : 

There a new feeling oft the maiden proves; 

Knows not 'tis love, but while she knows not, loves. 

Or there high tragedy, in wild despair, 

Lifts her red hand and rends her streaming hair. 

1 look and weep :■— I weep — yet look again, 
And snatch from sorrow a delicious pain : 
Whether the hapless youth, from love and life 
Torn by strong fate, resign his virgin wife : 
Or, hot from hell, the dire avenger stand, 
Exerting o'er the wretch her Stygian brand: 
Or heaven's dread wrath o'ertake, with tardy pace, 
The crimes of Atreus in his bleeding race; 
Or Creon's court atone the incestuous sire's embrace. 



} 



LIFE OF MILTON. 6/ 

from the "Animadversions;" and Milton 
says, " x He blunders at me for the rest, and 

Nor always do I lose, 'mid walls and streets, 
Spring's painted blossoms and refreshing sweets. 
Sometimes beneath my suburb grove I stray, 
Where blending elms dispense a chequer'd day: 
Where passing beauties often strike my sight, 
Diurnal stars that shoot a genial light. 
With raptured gaze, ah ! often have I hung 
On forms of power to make old Saturn young: 
Ah ! often have I seen the radiant eye 
Outblaze the gem, or Zembla's nightly sky; 
The neck, more white than Pelops' ivory arm; 
The nectar'd lip, with dewy rapture warm; 
The front's resplendent grace; the playful hairs, 
» Compell'd by Love to weave his golden snares; 
And the sweet power of cheek, where dimples wreathe,, 
And tints beyond the blush of Flora breathe. 
Yield, famed Heroides! yield nymphs, who strove 
With heaven's great empress for the heart of Jove! 
Stoop, Persian dames! your structured foreheads low! 
Ye Grecian, Dardan, Roman damsels, bow ! 
And thou, Tarpeian poet,* cease to boast 
Thy Pompey's porch, and theatre's bright host. 
Let foreign nymphs the fruitless strife forbear : 
Beauty's first prize belongs to Britain's fair. 
Imperial London ! built by Trojan hands, 
With towery head illustrious o'er the lands, 
Happy — thrice happy! — what the sun beholds 
Of female charms thy favour'd wall infolds. 
Not more the stars, whose beams illume thy nighty 
(Gay homagers of Luna's regent light,) 
Than lovely maids, of faultless form and face, 
Who o'er thy crowded paths diffuse a golden, grace, 
* Ovid. 

x Apol. for Smectymnuus, P. W. i. 213. 



68 



LIFE OF M1LTOX 



flings out stray y crimes at a venture, which 
he could never, though he be a serpent, suck 
from any thing that I have written/' 

Notwithstanding this strong assertion, 
the hostility of the present generation has 
again brought the evidence of Milton to 
convict Milton, and to establish the charges 

Hither, 'tis thought, came wafted by her doves, 

With all her shafts and war, the Queen of loves; 

For this her Gnidos, Paphos, Ida scorn'd, 

And Cyprus, with her rosy blush adorn'd. 

But I, ere yet her sovereign power enthralls, 

Prepare to fly these fascinating walls: 

To shun with moly's aid, divine and chaste, 

The courts by Circe's faithless sway disgraced^ 

And, (fix'd my visit to Cam's rushy pools,) 

To bear once more the murmur of the schools. 

But thou accept, to cheat the present time, 

My pledge of love, these lines constrain'd to rhyme. 

As this translation was made during a period of peculiar soli- 
citude, w r hen my mind was fevered, or rather phrenzied with alter* 
nate hopes and fears respecting a life far dearer to me than my own j 
and was written, only by scraps, in the few less agitated moments 
which it was then my fortune to enjoy, it is perhaps the worst 
of those versions which I have had the confidence to offer to 
the public. But I will not now either replace it with another, 
or even essentially alter it. With me it is consecrated by asso- 
ciated ideas; and if the reader, to whom it now belongs, cannot 
tolerate its imperfections, he may pass it over with a superficial- 
glance; and may either condemn or pity me as his judgment or 
his sympathy may predominate. 

y From the " Animadversions" no suspicion of a charge against 
their writer could by any process be extracted. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 69 

of his calumniator.. In opposition to this 
pretended evidence stand the records of our 
author's university, and the force of his own 
positive declarations. By the former of these, 
which prove that he took his bachelor's de- 
gree as soon as it could be taken/ it is made 
highly probable, if not absolutely certain 
that he lost no term ; and by the latter 
we are assured that he was not only ex- 
empted from punishment during his con- 
tinuance at Cambridge, but in that seat of 
learning was an object of affection and re- 
spect. The passage, which I shall cite as 
worthy of the reader's attention, is in the 
" Apology for Smectymnuus." After men- 
tioning the charge which we have already no- 
ticed, our author proceeds: " z For which com- 
modious lie, that he may be encouraged in 
the trade another time, I thank him: for it 
hath given me an apt occasion to acknowledge 
publickly with all grateful mind that more 
than ordinary favour and respect which I 
found above any of my equals at the hands 
of those courteous and learned men, the fel- 
lows of that college wherein I spent some 
years : who at my parting, after I had taken 
two degrees, as the manner is, signified many 

y In Jan. 1628-9. z P« W. i. 219. 



70 LIFE OF MILTON. 

ways how much better it would content them 
that I would stay : as by many letters full of 
kindness and loving respect, both before that 
time and long after, I was assured of their 
singular good affection towards me. Which, 
being likewise propense to all such as were for 
their studious and civil life worthy of esteem, 
I could not wrong their judgments and up- 
right intentions so much as to think I had 
that regard from them for other cause than 
that I might be slill encouraged to proceed in 
the honest and laudable courses of which 
they apprehended I had given good proof/' 

The evidence now before us seems to be 
conclusive; for I know not to what tribunal 
an appeal can be carried from the authority 
of the registers of an University, strengthened 
with assertions, 3 publicly made and uncontra- 
dicted at a time when their falsehood would 
be jealously watched and might easily be de- 
tected. What interpretation then are we to 
assign to those expressions in the elegy to 
Deodati which certainly refer to some com- 

a The slander was repeated, with some additional circum- 
stances, by Du Moulin in his (e Regii sanguinis Clamor ad cae- 
lum." " AJunt hominem CanUbrigiensi academia ob flagitia 
pulsum, dedecus et flagitium fugisse et in Italiam commi- 
grasse, p. 8. edit, printed 1&52. This is the vague and baseless 
echo of the writer of the " Modest Confutation." We shall soon 
have occasion to cite our author's reply to this revived calumny. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 71 

pulsive absence of the young student from his 
college, and which discover no fondness in the 
poet for the society or the country of Cam- 
bridge? As we find from some lines in the 
conclusion of the same elegy that it was his 
intention to return to his college, we may fairly, 
as I think, impute the banishment, of which 
he speaks, to the want of pecuniary supplies 
for his maintenance at the University; and 
the example of Gray may instruct us, that it 
is possible for a man of genius and of taste to 
dislike the conversation of a college or the 
naked vicinity of the Cam without being 
impelled to that dislike by unpopularity or 
injurious treatment. 

The absurd story of the corporal punish- 
ment, which Milton is asserted to have suf- 
fered, may be regarded as undeserving of no- 
tice. 5 It w r as communicated, as we are in- 
formed, with the pretence that it came from 
himself or from some of his near relations, by 
Aubrey to Wood; but with Wood, ill-disposed 
as he is known to have been to the fame of 
Milton, it obtained so little credit as not to 
find admission into his page. Can the testi- 
mony then of Aubrey be received in this 
instance as possessing any weight? On the 

k Warton's Life of Dean Bathurst. 



72 LIFE OF MILTON. 

value of that confirmation of this tale which 
Mr. Warton, with dry positivcness, and Dr. 
Johnson, with the insult of affected concern, 
have pretended to discover in that expres- 
sion of the last cited verses, " Ceeteraque, 
&c. " and other things," I shall leave to 
the reader to determine ; suggesting only 
that Dr. Johnson, for the purpose of con- 
cealing the weakness of his inference, has in- 
timated a false translation of the passage, 
or rather has drawn a conclusion not war- 
ranted by his premises. He says that Mil- 
ton declares himself weary of enduring " the 
threats of a rigorous master, and something 
else, which a temper like his cannot un- 
dergo/'* Here indeed he translates with suffi- 
cient correctness ; but in the following sen- 
tence this something else is changed into 
something more, and we are told that what 
was more than threat was evidently punish- 
ment!!! The story then of the corporal cor- 
rection, which has been raised into so much 
false importance, seems to rest on too airy 
a foundation to be worthy of our regard. 

Of its admission however, as true, we 
cannot perceive that any injury to the repu- 
tation of our author would be the necessary 
result, While the rod continued to be an, 



LIFE OF MILTOJST. 73 

instrument of punishment at our Universi- 
ties for the boys who then frequented them, 
it's infliction would be followed by no more 
disgrace than it is at present in our schools ; 
andj in either place, it must be the offence 
and not the chastisement w T hich can pro- 
perly be considered as the occasion of dis- 
honour. With respect to Milton, we may be 
confident that no immorality could be the 
cause of his punishment. Religion, as w r e 
know, took early possession of his bosom; 
and he, who with weak eyes and an aching 
head could consecrate one half of the night 
to study, cannot be suspected of stealing the 
other half from repose for the purpose of 
confounding it with excess or of polluting 
it with debauch. A mind indeed, like his, 
exulting in the exercise of its higher powers 
and intent on the pursuit of knowledge, could 
not, without a violation of its nature, submit 
to licentious indigencies. The cultivation 
of intellect not only diverts the attention 
from sensual pleasure, but inspires* 1 a pride 

c Even Mr. Wartor^ averse as he is from any favourable 
mention of Milton as a man, is forced to say on the subject 
of the punishment, that he will not suppose that it was for any 
immoral irregularity. See note on Eleg. i. v. 12. in the ed. of 
Milton's Juvenile Poems. 

d Milton talks in the same strain : he from feeling and I from 
observation. " These reasonings-, together with a certain nice* 



74 LIFE OF MILTON. 

which subdues its fascination; and while the 
spectacle of the w r orld exhibits innumerable 
instances of men of genius hurrying into ex- 
cessive gratification, it scarcely presents us 
with one, under the influence of the same 
unfortunate error, among the assiduous vota- 
ries of knowledge. 

But if Milton, the religious and the stu- 
dious Milton were not censurable for his im- 
moral irregularities, by what means, it may 
be asked, could he become obnoxious to the 
governours of his college? We may answer 
without difficulty, that he might offend their 
prejudices by the bold avowal of his puritan 
opinions: or he might wound their pride by 
his exposure of their negligent or injudici- 
ous discharge of duty: or, lastly, he might 
excite their displeasure by his haughty in- 
attention to their rules, and by his refusing 
perhaps to quit the banquet of his intellect 
or his imagination, on the page of Plato or of 
Homer, for the barren fatigue of translating 
a sermon or of throwing on his memory some 

fe ncss of nature, an honest haughtiness and self-esteem either of 
f c what I was or what I might be, (which let envy call pride), 
f< and lastly, a becoming modesty, all uniting the supply of their 
f natural aid together, kept me still above those low descents 
f* of mind, beneath which he must deject and plunge himself 
f that can agree to saleable and unlawful prostitutions." 

Apol. for Smect. P. W. 1. 224. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 75 

cumbrous pages of scholastic divinity. He 
had already, as we may fairly infer, imbibed 
from his presbyterian tutor, Young, a dislike 
to the discipline of our church; and we are 
assured, by more than one passage in his own 
works, that he looked with no friendly eye 
either on the plan of education e observed 
in the University, or on the learning f and 
the conduct g of its members. We may con- 
ceive therefore that he might be excluded 
from the favour of his superiors in the col- 
lege, and even be exposed to their censures 
without incurring the slightest loss of cha- 
racter, or sustaining the most trifling dimi- 
nution of our esteem. 

In his " Second Defence," published 
twelve years after the " Apology for Smec- 
tymnuus," he again asserts the purity of his 
college life; and affirms, in opposition to his 
adversary's calumnies, that he passed seven 
years at the University, pure from every 
blemish and in possession of the esteem of 
the good, till he took with applause his de- 
gree of master of arts; that he then retired 
to his father's house, and left behind him a 
memory which was cherished with affection, 
and respect by the greater part of the fellows 

e Treatise on Ed. to Hartlib. f Epist. Alex. Gillio, Jul. 2, 1628,, 
£ Apology for Smectymnuus. 



76 LIFE OP MILTON. 

of his college, who had always been assidu- 
ous in cultivating his regard. b 

Here therefore we must finally rest; and, 
throwing from our fancies every idea which 
can suggest our author as the object of posi- 
tive punishment, (of any thing more, we mean, 
than of those impositions, perhaps, which are 
injoined for trivial omissions and trespasses 
against the college forms,) we must decide 
that his morals at the University conciliated 
the general esteem, while his learning and his 
talents excited the general applause. Of his 
learning and his talents indeed he had ex- 
hibited, during this period, such decisive and 
brilliant proofs as to place above question 
his uncommon acquisitions and powers, and 
undoubtedly to draw on him the gaze and 
admiration of all who knew and were capable 
of appreciating his possessions. 

In the seven years of his academical life, 
however he might complain of " the rushy 
marshes and the naked banks of the Cam" as 
unfriendly to the Muses, he discovered that 

h " Illic (Cantabrigia) disciplinis atq; artibus tradi solitis 
septennium studui; procul omni flagitio, bonis omnibus pro- 
batus usquedum magistri, quern vocant, gradum cum laude 
etiam adeptus, non Italiam, quod impurus ille comminiscitur, 
profugi, sed sponte mea domum me contuli, meiqj etiam desi- 
derium apud collegii plerosq; socios, a quibus eram haud me- 
(Uocriter cultus, reliqui." Defen. secun. P. W. v. 230. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 77 

neither " soft shades/' nor a retirement from 
" the murmur of the hoarse schools" were 
essentially necessary to his inspiration. In 
this space of time his vigorous and ardent 
genius broke out in frequent flashes, and evi- 
dently disclosed the future author of Comus 
and of Paradise Lost. We have already no- 
ticed, on the testimony of Aubrey which 
may be received as to the fact in question, 
that Milton was a poet when he was only 
ten years old; and his translation of the 
136th psalm, which we still possess, suffi- 
ciently evinces his progress in poetic expres- 
sion at the early age of fifteen. When we 
read in this small work of " the golden-tress- 
ed sun/' of the moon shining among " her 
spangled sisters of the night;" of the Al- 
mighty smiting the first-born of Egypt with 
V his thunder-clasping hand/' we are forced 
to acknowledge the buddings of the rising 
poet, the first shootings of the infant oak 
which in later times was to overshadow the 
forest. 

At the age to which we have now fol- 
lowed him, or from the commencement of 
his academic career, his genius rushed ra- 
pidly to its maturity; and, like the Neptune 
of his favourite Homer, he may be consi- 
dered as having made only three majesticr 



78 LITE OF MILTON. 

strides to tlie summit on which he stands 
and beholds no superior. If we plant his first 
step at the beautiful little poem on the death of 
his sister's child, his second may be regarded 
as fixed on his sublime though unequal ode 
* On the Morning of Christ's Nativity/' and 
his third as reaching to his Comus. These 
compositions seem to be separated by nearly 
equal intervals as well with respect to the 
time as with reference to the power of their 
production. The last of these poems, with 
its bright companions, the Lycidas I/Alle- 
gro and 11 Penseroso, does not belong to the 
period under our notice, and shall be at- 
tended to in its place: but it will be proper 
not to pass the two former without remark, 
as they tend to exhibit to us the march of a 
mighty genius, in progress to supreme triumph. 
In the first of them, " On the death of a 
fair Infant/' 1 written when our author was 
only seventeen, we find the boy-poet moving 
with grace and harmony under the shackles 
of rhyme, and managing a stanza of seven 
lines with facility and effect. If he occa- 
sionally indulges in those conceits which ble- 
mished all the poetry of that age, his thoughts 
are more frequently just, and he is sometimes 

1 Our author's niece^ a daughter of his sister, Mrs. Philips. * 



LIFE OF MILTON. 79 

tender and sometimes sublime. The personi- 
fication of Winter, in his " ice-y pearled car/' 
is conceived and expressed in the spirit of ge- 
nuine poetry; and the 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th, and 
10th stanzas entertain us with a crowd of beau- 
ties, unneighboured by a thought, a line, or 
almost an expression, which we can be de- 
sirous of changing. — I shall cite the fifth 
stanza for its peculiar merit; and the sixth, 
as it seems to have suggested to Dryden one 
of those sublime ideas with which he opens 
his noble ode on the death of Mrs. Anne 

Killegrew. 

v. 

Yet can I not persuade me thou art dead ; 

Or that thy corse corrupts in Earth's dark wombj 
Or that thy beauties lie in wormy bed, 

Hid from the world in a low-delved tomb. 

Could Heaven for pity thee so strictly doom? 
Oh no! for something in thy face did shine 
Above mortality that show'd thou wast divine. 

VI. 

Resolve me then, O soul most surely blest! 
(If so it be that thou these plaints dost hear) 

Tell me, bright Spirit, where'er thou hoverest, 
Whether above that high first moving sphere, 
Or in the Elysian fields (if such there were) ? 

Oh say me true, if thou wert mortal wight ? 

And why from us so quickly thou didst take thy flight? k ' 

k I subjoin the passage in Dryden's Ode to which I have referred. 

Whether adopted to some neighbouring star, 

Thou roll'st above us in thy wand'ring race: 
Or, in procession fix'd and regular. 



80 LITE OF MILTON. 

The seventh stanza is the most objection- 
able of the poem: in the first and the se- 
cond, the thought which, at the first glance, 
might seem to require defence, is certainly 
correct: in the first indeed it is beautifully 
poetic. When the poet asks whether the 
object of his lamentation were 

that just Maid, who once before 

Forsook the hated earth, &c. 

and when he says, 

And thou, the mother of so sweet a child, 
Her false imagined loss cease to lament, &c. 

it is rather strange that both Tickell and 
Fen ton should call this fair infant the ne- 
phew of our author. 

In the ode " On the Morning of Christ's 
Nativity/' written after an interval of four 
years, we trace the flight of a more power- 
ful fancy, and distinguish beauties of a su- 
perior order mingled with defects perhaps of 
a greater magnitude. It discloses indeed in 
most of its parts the vicious taste of the age; 
but even where it is most erroneous it dis- 
closes also the power of the poet. The fourth 

Moved with the heavens' majestic pace: 
Or call'd to more superior bliss, 
Thou tread'st with Seraphim the dread abyss, &c. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 81 

stanza of the hymn is the offspring, at once, 
of correct judgment and of strong imagina- 
tion; and its merit is not lessened by the in- 
trusion of a thought or a word which the 
nicest critic would wish to be expelled. 

No war or battle's sound 

Was heard the world around : 
The idle spear and shield were high uphung. 

The hooked chariot stood, 

Unstain'd with hostile blood: 
The trumpet spake not to the armed throng $ 

And kings sate still with awful eye, 

As if they surely knew their sovrain Lord was nigh. 

The following stanza is not quite so un- 
exceptionable and pure; but its errors are 
venial, and it closes beautifully— 

k Who now hath quite forgot to rave, 
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave. 

The thirteen succeeding stanzas are dis- 
figured by numerous conceits : but from the 
nineteenth, 

The oracles are dumb, kc. 

to the conclusion of the ode, we are struck 
with the most forcible exhibition of the highest 
poetry. In the course of these nine stanzas 
we may perhaps be inclined to object to a 
few accidendal words; but we cannot with- 
hold our wonder from that vigour of concep- 

k Ocean. 
G 



82 LIFE OF MILTON. 

lion which has breathed a soul into the 
painting, and placed it in warm and stre- 
nuous animation before our eyes. On the 
topic of this superior composition, we may 
further remark the deep knowledge which it 
discovers; and may point admiration to the 
masterly hand with which the poet has thrown 
the rich mantle of his fancy over the curious 
erudition of the scholar. 

Besides these two little poems, which 
have been selected only as instances of the 
progress of our author's English Muse, he 
produced some other small pieces of poetry 
in his native language, which are all distin- 
guished by beauties and faults and disco- 
ver strong power with an unformed taste. 
"When, in the verses written " At a solemn 
Music," we read the following lines, where, 
speaking of the wedded sounds of the harmo- 
nious sisters, Voice and Verse, the young poet 
says that they are 

Dead things with inbreathed sense able to pierce, 

And to our high-raised phantasy present 

That undisturbed song of pure concent, 

Ay sung before the sapphire-colour'd throne, 

To Him that sits thereon, 
With saintly shout and solemn jubilee: 
Where the bright Seraphim in burning row. 
And the cherubic host in thousand quires 
Touch their immortal harps of golden wires, &c. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 83 

we acknowledge some touches prelusive to 
the Paradise Lost; and the following passage 
of the " Vacation Exercise/' in which he per- 
sonifies and addresses his native language, 
may be regarded as intimating a faint and 
doubtful promise of that divine poem: 

Yet I would rather, if I were to choose, 

Thy service in some graver subject use ; 

Such as may make thee search thy coffers round, 

Before thou clothe my fancy in fit sound : 

Such where the deep transported mind may soar 

Above the wheeling poles, and at heaven's door 

Look in and see each blissful Deity, 

How he before the thunderous throne doth lie., &c. 

But whatever emanations of genius may 
throw a light over his English poems, com- 
posed at this early stage of his life, there is 
much in all these pieces to be regretted and 
pardoned by the correct and classical reader. 
To his Latin poems however, of the same 
date, no such observation is in any degree 
applicable. Immediately conversant with 
the great masters of composition, he adopts 
their taste with their language; and, with 
the privilege as with the ease of a native, 
assumes his station in their ranks. For fluency 
and sweetness of numbers, for command 
and purity of expression, for variety and cor- 
rectness of imagery, we shall look in vain for 
his equal among the Latin poets of his age 



84 LIFE OF MILTON. 

and his country. May, the continuator and 
imitator of Lucan; and Cowley, 1 whose taste 
and thought are English and metaphysical 
while his verse walks upon Roman feet, will 
never, as I am confident, be placed in com- 
petition with our author by any adequate 
and unprejudiced judge. I speak with more 
direct reference to his elegies, which were all 
written in that interval of his life immedi- 
ately under our review, and which, evidently 
composed with the most entire affection, are 
executed on the whole with the most com- 
plete success. He was particularly fond in his 
youth, as he tells us himself, of " the smooth 
elegiac poets, whom, both for the pleasing 
sound of their numerous writing, which in 
imitation he found most easy and most agree- 
able to nature's part in him; and for their 
matter, which what it is there be few who 
know not, he was so allured to read, that no 
recreation came to him better welcome." 01 

But of the elegiac writers Ovid seems 
to have been his favourite and his model. 
AVe rpay sometimes discover Tibullus in his 

1 That Cowley was capable of writing Latin poetry with 

classical purity would be attested by his beautiful epitaph on 

himself, if even this short composition were not injured by the 

intrusion of one line of Cowleian quaintness and conceit 

" Nam vita gaudet mortua floribus." 

m Apol. for Smect. P. W. I. 223. 



LIFE OF MlLTOff. 85 

pages, but Ovid is diffused over them. He 
will not however suffer his respect for the 
Roman models, as Mr. Warton has justly re- 
marked, to oppress his powers or to deprive 
him of his own distinct and original charac- 
ter. He wields their language with the most 
perfect mastery, and, without wishing, like 
Cowley, to compel it to any un classical ser- 
vice, employs it as an obedient instrument. 

Of these poems, which are of great though 
various merit, the fifth, written in the author's 
twentieth year on the return of spring, and 
the sixth, addressed in his twenty-first year to 
his friend Deodati, seem to be entitled to the 
praise of superior excellence. In these ele- 
gies there appears to be a more masterly 
arrangement and a greater variety of po- 
etic imagery and allusion than in their fel- 
lows : though the fourth, written in his 
eighteenth year to his former preceptor 
Young ; and the seventh, in which the poet, 
at the age of nineteen, describes with ten- 
derness and sensibility the transient effects 
of love upon his bosom, must be admitted 
to very high and distinguished praise. The 
object, as it may be proper to mention, of 
the love, which he has thus commemorated, 
was a lady whom he accidentally saw in one 
of the public walks near the metropolis 



86 LIFE OF MILTON. 

and of whom, on her sudden disappearance 
among the crowd, he could never obtain any 
further intelligence. 

A critical eye may sometimes detect in 
these compositions an expression which an 
Augustan writer would not perhaps acknow- 
ledge as authentic; and a reader of taste may 
sometimes wish for more compression in the 
style, and may be sorry that the youthful 
poet did not occasionally follow some model 
of more nerve than the diffuse and languid 
Ovid. On the whole however these produc- 
tions must be regarded as possessing rare 
and pre-eminent merit. To England indeed 
they are peculiarly interesting, as they were 
the first pieces which extended her fame for 
Latin poetry to the continent; and as they 
evince the various power of her illustrious 
bard by showing that he, who subsequently 
approved himself to be her iEschylus and 
her Homer, could once flow in the soft num- 
bers and breathe the tender sentiments of 
Ovid and Tibullus. 

The only prose compositions of this date, 
which we possess of our author's, are some 
of his college and University exercises, un- 
der the title of " Prolusiones oratoriae," and 
five of his familiar letters; four of them in 
Latin to his old preceptors, Young and Gill, 



LIFE OF MILTOK. 87 

and one in English, forming his answer to a 
friend who had censured him for wasting his 
life in literary pursuits, and had urged him 
to forsake his study for some of the active oc- 
cupations of the world. This letter, of which 
Dr. Birch has published the rough and the 
corrected draught from the author's MSS. 
in the library of Trinity college, Cambridge, 
concludes with a very impressive sonnet; 
and is particularly interesting for the view 
which it gives to us of the writer's delicacy 
of principle and of the high motives which 
actuated his bosom. The reader, as I per- 
suade myself, will thank me for communis 
eating it. 

" SIR, 

ft Besides that iri sundry other re- 
spects I must acknowledge me to profit by 
you whenever we meet, you are often to 
me, and were yesterday especially, as a good 
watchman to admonish that the hours of 
the night pass on, (for so I call my life as 
yet obscure and unserviceable to mankind,) 
and that the day with me is at hand, wherein 
Christ commands all to labour while there is 
light. Which because I am persuaded you 
do to no other purpose than out of a true 
desire that God should be honoured in 



88 LIFE OF MILTON. 

every one, I therefore think myself bound, 
though unasked, to give you account, as oft 
as occasion is, of this my tardy moving, ac- 
cording to the precept of my conscience 
which, I firmly trust, is not without God. 
Yet now I will not strain for any set apolo- 
gy, but only refer myself to what my mind 
shall have at any time to declare herself 
at her best ease. But if you think, as you 
said, that too much love of learning is in 
fault, and that I have given up myself to 
dream away my years in the arms of stu- 
dious retirement, like Endymion with the 
moon, as the tale of Latmus goes; yet con- 
sider, that if it were no more but the mere 
love of learning, whether it proceeds from a 
principle bad, good, or natural, it could not 
have held out thus long against so strong op- 
position on the other side of every kind. For 
if it be bad, why should not all the fond 
hopes that forward youth and vanity are 
fledge with, together with gain pride and 
ambition, call me forward more powerfully 
than a poor regardless and unprofitable sin 
of curiosity should be able to withhold me, 
whereby a man cuts himself off from all ac- 
tion, and becomes the most helpless pusil- 
lanimous and unweaponed creature in the 
world, the most unfit and unable to do that 



LIFE OF MILTON". 89 

which all mortals most aspire to, either to be 
useful to his friends or to offend his ene- 
mies. Or if it be to be thought a natural 
proneness, there is against that a much more 
potent inclination inbred, which about this 
time of a man's life sollicits ' most, the desire 
of house and family of his own, to which 
nothing is esteemed more helpful than the 
early entering into credible employment, and 
nothing hindering than this affected solitari- 
ness. And though this were enough, yet 
there is to this another act, if not of pure 
yet of refined nature, no less available to 
dissuade prolonged obscurity, a desire of ho- 
nour and repute and immortal fame seated 
in the breast of every true scholar, which all 
make haste to by the readiest ways of pub- 
lishing and divulging conceived merits, as 
well those that shall as those that never shall 
obtain it. Nature therefore would presently 
work the more prevalent way, if there were 
nothing but this inferior bent of herself to 
restrain her. Lastly, the love of learning, 
as it is the pursuit of something good, it 
would sooner follow the more excellent and 
supreme good known and presented, and so 
be quickly diverted from the empty and fan- 
tastic chace of shadows and notions to the 
solid good flowing from due and timely 



90 LIFE OF MILTON. 

obedience to that command in the gospel 
set out by the terrible seizing of him that 
hid the talent. It is more probable there- 
fore, that not the endless delight of specu- 
lation, but this very consideration of that 
great commandment does not press forward, 
as soon as many do, to undergo, but keeps 
off with a sacred reverence and religious ad- 
visement how best to undergo; not taking 
thought of being late, so it give advantage 
to be more fit; for those that were latest 
lost nothing, when the master of the vine- 
yard came to give each one his hire. And 
here I am come to a stream-head, copious 
enough to disburden itself like Nilus at seven 
mouths into an ocean. But then I should 
also run into a reciprocal contradiction of 
ebbing and flowing at once, and do that, 
which I excuse myself for not doing, ' preach 
and not preach/ Yet that you may see that 
I am something suspicious of myself and 
do take notice of a certain belatedness in- 
me, I am the bolder to send you some of my 
nightward thoughts some while since, be- 
cause they come in not altogether unfitly, 
made up in a Petrarchian stanza, which I 
told you of. 

" How soon hath time, the subtle thief of youth, 
Stolen on his wing my three and twentieth year! 
My hasting days fly on with full career j 



LIFE OF MILTON. 91 

But ray late spring no bud or blossom shew'th. 
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth, 

That I to manhood am arrived so near, 

And inward ripeness doth much less appear, 
That some more timely-happy spirits indu'th. 
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow, 

It shall be still in strictest measure even 

To that same lot, however mean or high, 
Towards which time leads me, and the will of Heaven. 

All is, if I have grace to use it so, 

As ever in my great task-master's eye.'* 

" By this I believe you may well repent 
of having made mention at all of this matter; 
for if I have not all this while won you to 
this, I have certainly wearied you of it. This 
therefore alone may be a sufficient reason 
for me to keep me as I am, lest, having 
thus tired you singly, I should deal worse 
with a whole congregation and spoil all the 
patience of a parish: for I myself do not 
only see my own tediousness, but now grow 
offended with it that has hindered me thus 
long from coming to the last and best period 
of my letter, and that which must now 
chiefly work my pardon, that I am your 
true and unfeigned friend/' 

On his taking the degree of master of arts 
in l632, n having taken that of bachelor, as we 

n In a little poem fc De Idea Platonica," written by our au- 
thor while he was at the University, there is a most striking per- 
sonification of Eternity — 



92 LtFE O* MILTON. 

have already observed, in 1628-9, he left Cam- 
bridge to reside at Horlon in Buckingham- 
shire, where his father lived on a competent 
fortune which he had acquired by his bu- 
siness. 

That Milton quitted the University with- 
out obtaining a fellowship has been sug- 
gested as a proof of the disapprobation of 

Quaeque in immenso procul 

Antro recumbis otiosa jEternitas 
Monumenta servans et ratas leges Jovis, Sec. 

And thou Eternity, who dost diffuse 
O'er all the enormous cave thy giant limbs 
In grand repose, and guard'st the laws of Jove, 
And the high structures of his glorious hand. 

In our author's poem to his father there is also a very noble 
line in which he speaks with equal sublimity of Eternity; 

JEternaeque moras stabunt immobilis aevi. 
The eternal pause of age for ever fix'd. 

The poem which he wrote about this time, (1628,) for one of 
the Fellows of his college, on the subject of the unimpaired 
vigour of nature, " Naturam non pati senium," possesses the merit, 
in a most uncommon degree, of poetic fancy and of poetic dic- 
tion. See his letter to Alexander Gill, July 2, 1628. . 

He incepted, (to speak the academic language of Cambridge,) 
A.M. at the end of the Lent term in 1632; and he took his for- 
mer degree, as we have before stated in Jan, 1 628-9. 

In the ordo senioritatis Baccalaureis reservatae, among twenty- 
four, he occupies the fourth place. Of his own college, he was 
one of thirty who became B. A. at the same time; and one of 
twenty seven who were made M. A. Among the M.A's his 
name in the subscription-book stands the first* 



LIFE OF MILTON. 93 

his college. But let it be recollected that 
in his time there was only one fellowship in 
his college tenable by a layman, and that, 
as he had now r determined against entering 
into the church for reasons p which, hallowed 
by conscience, are entitled to our respect, the 
attainment of a common fellowship, to be 
held only for a very limited term, could not 
be among the objects of his life. The com- 
petence also, of which he was assured from 
his father, would place him above the wish 
of any thing to be obtained by solicitation; 
and it is not impossible that, associating 
the idea of a fellow of a college, as the go- 
vernor of a community, with that of some 
duty to be discharged by residence, he would 
decline a situation which must preclude him 
from the range of the world. 

The five years, which he passed under his 
father's roof, q may justly be regarded as the 

° Founded by Edward VI. Two other lay -fellowships have 
since been founded by sir John Finch, and sir Thomas Baines. 

p — tf perceiving, that he who would take orders must sub- 
scribe slave, and take an oath withall, which unless he took with 
a conscience that could retch, he must either strain perforce or 
split his faith j I thought it better to prefer a blameless silenc^ 
before the office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude 
and forswearing." Reasons of Church Gov. P. W. i. 123. 

i This house, as Mr. Todd says on the authority of the rector 
of Horton, was pulled down about fourteen years ago. 



94 LIFE OF MILTON. 

happiest of his life/ In literary leisure and 
the company of an intelligent and beloved 
father; with a select correspondence and an 
occasional intercourse with the society, the 
sciences and the arts of the metropolis, the 
temperance of his enjoyment must have been 
completely satisfied; and the fruition of the 
tranquil present was not disturbed by any 
alarming prescience of the dark and stormy 
future. In a passage of his spirited poem to 
his father, written, as it is probable, about this 
time, he seems conscious of his high destiny, 
and magnanimously exults over those evils 
which he knew, by the experience of all ages, 
to be inseparably attached to it. 

Este procul vigiles curae ! procul este querelas, 
Invidiaeque acies transverso tortilis hirquo: 
Saeva nee r anguiferos extende calumnia rictus : 

r Paternp rure, quo is transigendae senectutis causa concesse- 
rat, evolvendis Graecis Latinisque scriptoribus summum per otium 
totus vacavi; ita tamen ut nonnunquam rus urbe mutarem, aut 
coemendorum gratia librorum, aut novum quidpiam in Mathe- 
maticis vel in Musfcis, quibus turn oblectabar, addiscendi. 

Defen. secund. P. W. v. 230. 

r u Anguiferos rictus," is certainly an inaccurate expression. 
Vipereos rictus, if the verse had permitted it, would have been 
unexceptionable. " Calumnia" is, I fear, the property of prose 
rather than of poetry. It occurs frequently in Cicero, and some- 
times as a forensic word; but never in Virgil, nor, as I believe, 
in any of the Augustan poets. Many of Milton's expressions in 
his Latin poems are not supported by high classical authority. 



LIFE OF MILTOX. 95 

In me triste nihil fcedissima turba potestis. 
Nee vestri sum juris ego; securaque tutus 
Pectora, vipereo gradiar sublimis ab ictu. 

Hence wakeful Cares and pining Sorrows fly ! 
Hence leering Envy with your sidelong eye! 
Slander in vain thy viper jaws expand ! 
No harm can touch me from your hateful band: 
Alien from you, my breast, in virtue strong, 
Derides the menace of your reptile throng. 

But he could only calculate the contin- 
gencies, not fasten his sight, (if the expression 
may be allowed to me,) on the realities of fu- 
turity. If some minister of the divine wrath, 
commissioned to disclose the vision of our 
poet's advancing life, had at this instant 
exhibited to him the Milton of later days, 
sacrificing his prime of manhood to the sul- 
len and fiery demon of religious and civil 
discord ; exposed to rancorous and savage 
calumny; making a cheerful surrender of his 
sight to the cause, as he deemed it. of his 
country and his species, yet afterwards aban- 
doned and persecuted; with his public ob- 
jects lost, his private fortune ruined, his 
society avoided, his name pronounced with 
execration, his life itself saved only by a 
kind of miracle from an ignominious and a 
torturing execution, and his old age, more 
deeply clouded also by the unkindness of 
children, finally closing amid dangers and 



96 LITE OF MILTOX. 

alarms, in solitude and darkness — if this 
scene, I say, in its full deformity had been 
exposed to our poet's eye in his happy re- 
treat at Horton, the cup of joy would have 
fallen from his hand; his fortitude, strong as 
we know it to have been, would probably 
have yielded to the shock; and, prostrate 
before the Father of mercies, he would have 
poured his soul in solicitous supplication for 
the refuge of an early grave. 

But of the world of destiny, as it was 
passing, one spot alone was discovered to 
him; and all that was unknown was peopled 
by hope with her own gay and beautiful pro- 
geny. While he passed his hours in converse 
with the mighty dead, or with the wise and 
virtuous living; while, unmolested by any 
agitating or painful passions, he penetrated 
science with his intellect or traversed fairy 
regions with his fancy, he enjoyed an inter- 
val of happiness on which, amid the asperi- 
ties of his later years, he must frequently 
Lave looked back with emotions nearly simi- 
lar to those of the traveller, who, wandering 
over the moors of Lapland and beaten by 
an arctic storm, reflects on the blue skies, 
the purple clusters and the fragrant orange 
groves of Italy. 

To this favoured period of our author's 



LIFE OF MILTON. $f 

life are we indebted for some of the nlost 
exquisite productions of his genius. The 
Comus, in 1G34, and the Lycidas, in 1637? 
were unquestionably written at Horton; and 
there is the strongest internal evidence to 
prove that the Arcades, 1/ Allegro, and II 
Penseroso were also composed in this rural 
scene and this season of delightful leisure. 
It is probable, indeed, that the composition 
of the " Arcades" preceded that of the " Co- 
mus," as the countess dowager of Derby, 5 for 
whom it was written, seems, from her resi- 
dence at Harefield in the vicinity of Horton 
and from her double alliance with the family 
of Egerton, to have been the connecting link 
between the author and the earl of Bridge- 
water,* the immediate patron of Comus. 

These pieces have been so frequently 
made the subjects of critical remark, that 
a long suspension of our narrative would not 

s Alice, countess dowager of Derby, was the sixth daughter 
of sir John Spencer of Althorpe in Northamptonshire, and mar- 
ried lord Strange, who by the death of his father in 15Q4 be- 
came earl of Derby, and died in the following year. She after- 
wards married the lord chancellor Egerton, who died in 1(51/ I 
her daughter, Frances, married the chancellor's son, John earl 
of Bridgewater lord president of Wales. She was of the samer 
family with Spenser the poet; and had been his patroness 
and his theme of praise before she was celebrated by the Muse 1 
of Milton. 

1 The earl of Bridgewater was the proprietor also of Hortorr, 

H 



98 LIFE OF MILTON. 

be compensated by any novelty in the obser- 
vations which could be offered on them. 
The Arcades u is evidently nothing more than 
the poetic part of an entertainment the bulk 
of which was formed of prose dialogue and 
machinery. But, whatever portion it consti- 
tuted of the piece, it was of sufficient conse- 
quence to impart a value to the whole; and 
it discovers a kindred though inferior lustre 
to that richest produce of the mines- of fancy, 
the dramatic poem of Comus. 

° I am rather surprised that Mr. Warton, who with his bro- 
ther commentators frequently detects imitation in a single and> 
sometimes not uncommon word, should omit to notice, in the 
speech of the Genius, an open trespass on the property of Shak- 
speare. The Genius says, 

I see bright honour sparkle in your eyes : 

and Helena, in <c All's well that ends well," addressing one of 
the young lords, from whom she was to select her husband, uses 
nearly the same expression — 

The honour, sir, which flames in your fair eyes, 
Before I speak too threateningly replies." 2 

x The readers of Milton's juvenile poetry are under consider- 
able obligations to Mr. Warton : but this gentleman, like other 
commentators, sometimes employs much perverse ingenuity in 
making what is plain obscure, what is good bad. Accumulating 
passages, in a note on verse 81 of this piece — 

And so attend ye on her glittering state, 

to prove that the word " state" was used by our old poets to ex- 
press thgt particular part of the royal apparatus, a canopy, (in 



LIFE OF MILTON. 99 

The Mask of Com us was acted before the 
earl of Bridge water, the president of Wales, in 
1634, at Ludlow Castle; and the characters 
of the Lady and the two Brothers were repre- 
sented by the lady Alice Egerton, then about 
thirteen vears of as;c. and her two brothers; 
lord Brackley and the Hon. Thomas Egerton, 
who were still younger. The story of this 
piece is said to have been suggested by the 
circumstance of the lady Alice having been 
separated from her company in the night 
and having wandered for some time by her- 
self in the forest of Haywood/ as she was 

not one of which passages, by the bye, may ie state" be consi- 
dered as possessing any meaning different from what would be' 
assigned to it by a modern poet,) he tells us that in this sense; 
(of canopy,) is state? to be understood in the description of the 
swan in the 7th book of Paradise Lost : 

The swan with arched neck 
Between her white wings mantling, proudly rows 
Her state with oary feet.— 

i. e. the swan with arched neck, between the mantling of hei 
white wings, proudly rows her canopy, (her head and bent neck) 
with her feet for oars. Having established this sense of the pas- 
sage, he very properly accuses the great poet of an affected and 
unnatural conceit! ! ! If this be not ingenuity become mad, mis- 
chievous, and dull — I will appeal, from the black letter critics, 
to all the readers of taste, 

tc From old Bellerium to the northern main." 

>" See Warton's note on Comus, said to be mentioned in a MS* 
by Oldys, 1,34, 



100 LIFE OF MILTON. 

returning from a distant visit to meet hef 
father on his taking possession of his newly 
intrusted sceptre. On this small base of fact 
a most sumptuous and beautiful edifice of 
fancy has been constructed. 

Comus, KnMOI, or revelry, 2 had been, 
personified, as Mr. Warton has remarked be- 
fore me, in a dreadfully sublime passage of the 
Agamemnon of iEschylus; and the jolly God 
had been already introduced upon our stage 
in a mask by Ben Jonson : but it remained for 
Milton to develope his form and character, 
to give him a lineage and an empire, and 
to make him the hero of the most exquisite 
dramatic poem, which, perhaps, the genius 
of man has ever produced. Among the com- 

z T«v yccg ctiyrfj ?&$' httfor \%\ii>nsi yop \ 

Hvfji,(pQoyfo$, 8>c sv<puwo$' s yap stf s.lyzi. 
Kofi \}.Y\y msrfotJKUJS y, uog Srpacrvfao'&ki rt'A&v, 
Bgo^eiov oCipa, y.cB'^os iv oo[j,oi$ f/isvm, 
Av<r7rs[j,Trlo$ e%w ovfyowv ipwvvwy. 
Tpv8<ri <5" vpvQv <5a;'ju,a<n , &pQ<rI i [j,£vzt 
IIpo>JT'ctpx t Ov d'frjv 

The band of Furies, with their voices tuned 
In dreadful harmony, shall never quit 
These fatal walls : and now with human blood 
Drunk and made savage, Comus riots here, 
Sent by his kindred Furies to destroy : 
While they, the baleful inmates of this housey 
With notes of horror and Tartarean din, 
Sing the first crime of this devoted race. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 30i 

positions of our own country it certainly 
stands unrivalled for its affluence in poetic 
imagery and diction; and, as an effort of the 
creative power, it can be parallelled only by 
the Muse of Shakspeare, by whom in this re- 
spect it is possibly exceeded. 

With Shakspeare the whole, excepting 
some rude outlines or suggestions of the story, 
is the immediate emanation of his own mind: 
but Milton's erudition precluded him from 
this extreme originality, and was perpetually 
supplying him with thoughts, which would 
sometimes obtain the preference from his 
judgment and would sometimes be mistaken 
for her own property by his invention. Ori- 
ginal however he is; and of all the sons of 
song inferior in this requisite of genius to 
Shakspeare alone. Neither of these wonder- 
ful men was so far privileged above his spe- 
cies as to possess other means of acquir- 
ing knowledge than through the inlets of the 
senses, and by the subsequent operations of 
the mind on this first mass of ideas. The 
most exalted of human intelligences cannot 
form one mental phantasm uncompounded 
of this visible world. Neither Shakspeare 
nor Milton could conceive a sixth corporeal 
sense, or a creature absolutely distinct from 



102 LIFE OF MILTON. 

the inhabitants of our earth. A Caliban or 
an Ariel, a demon or an angel are only se- 
veral compositions and modifications of our 
animal creation ; and heaven and hell can 
be built with nothing more than our terres- 
trial elements newly arranged and variously 
combined. The distinction therefore be- 
tween one human intelligence and another 
must be occasioned solely by the different 
degrees of clearness force and quickness 
with which it perceives, retains, and com- 
bines. On the superiority in these mental 
faculties it would be difficult to decide be- 
tween those extraordinary men who are the 
immediate subjects of our remark : for if we 
are astonished at that power which, from a 
single spot as it were, could collect suffi- 
cient materials for the construction of a world 
of its own, we cannot gaze without wonder 
at that proud magnificence of intellect which, 
rushing like some mighty river through ex- 
tended lakes and receiving into its bosom 
the contributory waters of a thousand re- 
gions, preserves its course its n&me and its 
character entire. With Milton, from what- 
ever mine the ore may originally be derived, 
the coin issues from his mint with his own 
image and superscription; and passes into. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 103 

currency with a value peculiar to itself. To 
speak accurately, the mind of Shakspeare 
could not create; and that of Milton in- 
vented with equal or with nearly equal power 
and effect. If we admit in the " Tempest/' or 
the " Midsummer's Night's Dream/' a higher 
flight of the inventive faculty, we must al- 
low a less interrupted stretch of it in the 
Comus. In this poem there may be some- 
thing which might have been corrected by 
the revising judgment of its author: but its 
errors, in thought or in language, are so few 
and trivial that they must be regarded as the 
inequality of the plumage, and not as the 
depression or the unsteadiness of the wing. 
The most splendid results of Shakspeare's 
poetry are still pressed and separated by some 
interposing defect: but the poetry of the 
Comus may be contemplated as a series of 
gems strung on golden wire, where the 
sparkle shoots along the line with scarcely 
the intervention of a single opake spot. 

This exquisite piece has been pronounced 
to be undramatic : the mode, in which its 
story is opened, has been censured as ab- 
surd ; and its speeches have been condemned 
as too long, too nicely balanced, and too 
" tediously' 3 moral for the production of stage- 
interest. With reference to our theatre, 



104 LITE OF MILTON. 

though even on our stage Comus * has been 
more than tolerated, these censures may be 
admitted as just. But Milton when he wrote 
his Mask had no view to the modern scene ; 
and, writing for one specific object and in a 
peculiar walk of composition, he might feel 
himself to be liberated from many of those 
rules which adapt the regular drama to the 
attainment of its ends. He k,new that a M^sk 
was an entertainment addressed immediately 
^nd solely to the imagination; that it was the 
appropriate organ of fancy, and, while it 
presented pleasing and striking images to the 
inind 5 that it affected no controll over the 
passions nor any rigid observance of poetic 
truth. With him it was made the vehicle of 
pure poetry carrying the most sublime mo- 
rality in her embrace, and solicitous, not to 
agitate, but to amuse, exalt, and refine. He 
has observed however, w r ith considerable fide- 
lity, the practice of the Grecian drama- 
tists; and, when he unfolds the story of his 
scene in a speech delivered in the solitude of 
a wild wood, (and this certainly is the most 
reprehensible circumstance in the conduct 
of his fable,) he is only guilty of the same 
trespass against common sense which his 

a Comus was acted at Drury Lane, in March, 1738, vitli 
much applause fpr several successive nights. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 105 

favourite Euripides has frequently commit- 
ted. The length and even poise of the 
speeches in Comus are also formed on the 
same model ; and, when we recollect how 
often the dialogue on the Athenian stage is 
conducted through an entire scene in replies 
find retorts consisting each of a single line, 
we shall not be surprised at the same short 
and equally measured conversation when it 
occurs between Comus and the Lady. 

It seems impossible for poetry to go be- 
yond her excursions in " this wilderness of 
sweets/' She treads sometimes on the very 
fearful and giddy edge of a precipice, and, 
while we admire her boldness, we are doubt-* 
ful of her safety. In that exquisite passage — . 

How sweetly did they float upon the wings. 
Of silence through the empty-vaulted night, 
At every fall smoothing the raven down 
Qf darkness till it smiled, 

if our rapture .would suffer us to be suffici- 
ently composed to consult our reason, we 
might perhaps justly question the propriety 
of the length to which the poet's fancy has 
carried hini. Darkness may aptly be repre- 
sented by the blackness of the raven ; and 
the stillness of that darkness may be pa- 
rallelled by an image borrowed from the ob- 
ject of another sense— by the softness of 



106 LIFE OF MILTON. 

down; but it is surely a trangression which 
stands in need of pardon when, proceeding a 
step further and accumulating personifica- 
tions, we invest this raven-down with life and 
make it to smile." Another passage, which 
represents the effect of the Lady's singing 
with a different allusion, is not liable to any 
objection, and is altogether admirable: 

At last a soft and solemn-breathing sound 
Rose, like a steam of rich distill'd perfumes, 
And stole upon the air. 

Henry Lawes the musician, who composed 
the music for this poem and who was him- 
self no indifferent poet, acted the part of the 

b One of the least able and least specious of my public critics, 
in a periodical publication* which, after staiggling for a short time 
in weak and doubtful existence, is now extinct, has dogmatically 
pronounced me to be guilty in this observation of a gross mistake, 
asserting that it is Darkness itself and not its raven-down which 
is here personified by the poet. I am willing to receive correction 
from any hand, however generally feeble and insufficient : but in 
the present instance I must be pardoned by the critic if I reject 
his correction, and adhere to my original remark. The thing 
which is smoothed, in this passage, is evidently the thing which 
is made to smile. If we alter the sentence, and, instead of using 
the auxiliary preposition, employ the inflected possessive of Dark- 
ness, which is of course grammatically the same, every doubt will 
be removed from the question. To smooth Darkness's raven 
down till it smiled, must surely be to make the raven down smile. 
The critic was led to this unlucky opportunity of exhibiting his 
sagacity by the place which the word darkness occupies in the 
sentence. 

* The Literary Journal, published by Baldwins. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 107 

attendant Spirit, and was designed in that 
piece under the character of Thyrsis — 

Whose artful strains have oft delay'd 
The huddling brook to hear his madrigal. 

He was retained as a domestic in the earl of 
Bridgewater's family, where he was the mu- 
sical instructor of the ladj^ Alice. He was the 
friend of Waller, and the theme of his Muse : 
but this composer's most distinguishing ho- 
nours are derived from his connexion with the 
Comus, and its author. Of the former of these 
he was the first publisher," and by the latter he 
was made an object of particular regard, of 
high and specific panegyric/ In his dedi- 
cation of this first edition of Comus, to the 
lord Brackley who had represented the elder 
brother, Lawes speaks of the work as not 
openly acknowledged by its author; and the 
motto, undoubtedly prefixed to it by Milton 
himself, 

Eheu! quid volui misero mini! floribus Austrum 
Perditusj 

Ah! what could I intend ? undone, I find 
My flowers submitted to the withering wind : 

elegantly and happily intimates the sensibi- 
lity of a young writer trembling on the edge 

c In 1637. d See Milton's xiiith Sonnet. 



108 LIFE OF MILTON. 

of the press, and fearful lest the tenderness 
of his blossoms should be blighted by the 
breath of the public. 

The Lycidas was written, as there is reason 
to believe, at the solicitation of the author's 
College, to commemorate the death of Mr. 
Edward King, one of its fellows, and a son of 
sir John King, Knt. secretary for Ireland in 
the reigns of Elizabeth James and Charles. 
This young man, whose vessel f foundered, 
as she was sailing from Chester to Ireland, 

e From a letter of our author's to his friend, Alex. Gill, dated 
Dec. 4, l6'J4, we find that in the same year, in which the poet 
finished Comus, he made that version of the 114th Psalm into 
Greek hexameters, which he afterwards published with his 
other poems. It was thrown off, as he tells his correspondent, 
without any thought or intention of mind, and as it were 
with some sudden and strange impulse, before day-light in his 
bed. " Nullo certe animi proposito, sed subito nescio quo im- 
pelu, ante lucis exortum, ad Graeci carminis heroici legem, in 
lectulo fere concinnabam." Epis. fam. 5. 

f I shall here rectify an inaccuracy in Mr. Warton's relation of 
the Shipwreck of Mr. King. Mr. W. says, " When in calm 
weather^ not far from the English coast, the ship, a very crazy 
vessel, a fatal and perjidious lark, struck on a rock, and sud- 
denly sunk to the bottom with all that were on board, not one 
escaping." [See Milton's Juven. Poems, 2d ed. p. 38.] A more 
correct account of this disaster, given by Hogg who in l6g4 pub- 
lished a Latin translation or rather paraphrase of the Lycidas, 
informs us that several escaped in the boat from the sinking 
vessel; but that Mr. King and some others, fatally unmoved by 
the importunities of their associates, continued on board and 
peiished. This melancholy event happened on the 10th of Au- 
gust 1637. 



LITE OF MILTON. lOfll 

in a calm sea and not far from land, was so 
highly esteemed by the whole University, for 
his learning piety and talents, that his death 
was deplored as a public loss, and Cambridge 
invited her Muses to celebrate and lament 
him. In the collection of poems, which was 
published on this occasion in 1638, Milton's 
Lycidas occupies the last and, as it was no 
doubt intended to be, the most honourable 
place. Every honour which could be paid 
to its poetic excellence was inferior to its just 
demand : but we may reasonably wonder 
that a poem, breathing such hostility to the 
clergy of the church of England and me- 
nacing their leader with the axe, should be 
permitted to issue from the University press. 
The speech indeed, assigned to St. Peter — 

The pilot of the Galilean lake. 

may properly be regarded as the most objec- 
tionable part of the composition. The poetry 
in these nineteen lines is not equal to what 
precedes and what follows them ; and to make 
an Apostle speak with exultation of the ap- 
proaching punishment of a bishop by the 
hand of the executioner must certainly be 
censured as improper and indecorous. 

But, whatever sentence may be passed on 
this small portion of the Lycidas, the entire 



110 LIFE OF MILTON. 

monody must be felt by every reader of taste 
as an effusion of the purest and most exalted 
poetry. We may wish perhaps that it had 
been constructed on some other plan of 
stanza, or with a different arrangement of its 
rhymes; we may sometimes be tempted to 
think its transitions too violent, and its al- 
lusions not sufficiently obvious : but, as a 
whole, it seizes upon our fancy with irresisti- 
ble force, and will scarcely suffer our judg- 
ment to discover its defects. In one place, 
and in one only, it exhibits a magnificent, 
though obscure image in a state rather of in- 
jury from its association with what is little 
and improper: 

Where the great vision of the guarded mount 
Looks towards Namancos s and Bayona's hold — ■ 
Look homeward Angel now, and melt with ruth : 
And O ye dolphins waft the hapless youth ! 

After invoking the great vision, or the Arch 
Angel seated on his lofty rock and throwing 
his angel-ken over the sea 

Towards Namancos and Bayona's hold, 

s This Namancos has puzzled all the commentators. The 
conjecture that it is a name, found in some old romance, for 
Numantia, strikes me as improbable; and I am unable to sug- 
gest any other. From its situation, not indeed near the coast 
but in that line of country towards which St. Michael's Mount 
looks, Numantia would sufficiently answer the purpose of the 
poet. 



LIFE OF MILTON. Ill 

to turn his countenance homeward and to 
weep for the calamity of that country which 
was under his own immediate guardianship* 
it surely is a most notable anti-climax to call 
upon the dolphins to waft the hapless youth* 
when their services could be of no use to him, 
and when he was so far from hapless, that he 
was " laving his locks with nectar in the blest 
kingdoms of joy and love/' 

To enumerate the beauties of this poem 
would extend our digression beyond its just 
length, and w r ould not be consistent with our 
plan. We have observed that the Comus 
came into the world unacknowledged by its 
author, and it is remarkable that the writer 
of the Lycidas was intimated only by the 
initials J. M. This great man seems to have 
felt an awe of the public by which the herd 
of small writers are seldom repressed — 

For fools rush in where angels fear to tread. 

But, if he published with diffidence, he wrote 
with boldness and with the persuasion, re- 
sulting from the consciousness of power, of 
literary immortality. " After I had (he tells 
us h ) from my first years, by the ceaseless dili- 
gence of my father, (whom God recompense!) 

h Reasons of C. Govern. B. 2d. P.W. i. 118. 



Il2 LITE OF MILTOtf. 

been exercised in the tongues, and some 
sciences as my age would suffer, by sundry 
masters and teachers both at home and at 
the schools, it was found lhat whether ought 
was imposed on me by them that had the 
overlooking, or betaken to of my own choice* 
in English or other tongue, prosing or vers- 
ing, but chiefly this latter, the style by cer- 
tain vital symptoms it had, was likely to 
live/' In a letter, which from its date was 
written about two months before his Lycidas* 
he lays open to his friend Deodati the lofty 
hopes and the daring projects of his heart* 

" But you are now anxious, as I know; 
(the writer says) " to have your curiosity gra- 
tified. You solicitously enquire even about 
my thoughts. Attend then, Deodati, but let 
me spare myself a blush by speaking in yoUr 
ear; and for a moment let me talk proudly 
to you, Do you ask me what is in my 
thought? So may God prosper me, as it is 
nothing less than immortality. But how shall 
I accomplish it ? My wings are sprouting, 
and I meditate to fly: but while my Pegasus 
yet lifts himself on very tender pinions, let 
me be prudent and humble." 1 

' For the amusement of my readers I will insert the whole letter 
from which I have made this extract, with a translation of it by 
my friend Mr. Wrangham. We find by this document that Milton 



LIFE OF MILTON. 113 

We shall again have occasion to remark 

had just accomplished a very rugged journey through some of the 
most barren and unsightly tracts of history. Of all the produc- 
tions of the pen, familiar letters give us the most insight into the 
sanctuary of the writer's bosom. 

CAROLO DEODATO. 

<{ Quod caeteri in Uteris suis plerunque faciunt amici, ut uni- 
cam tantum salutem dicere sat habeant, tu illud jam video quid 
sit quod toties impertiasj ad ea enim quae tute prius, et alii 
adhuc sola afferre possunt vota, jam nunc artem insuper tuam, 
vimque omnem medicam quasi cumulum accedere vis me scili- 
cet intelligere. Jubes enim' salvere sexcenties, quantum volo, 
quantum possum, vel etiam amplius. Nae ipsum te nuper salu- 
tis condum prooram esse factum oportet, ita totum salubritatis 
penum dilapidas, aut ipsa proculdubio sanitas jam tua parasita 
esse debet, sic pro rege te geris atque imperas ut dicto sit au- 
diens; itaque gratulor tibi, et duplici proinde nomine gratias 
tibi agam necesse est, cum amicitiae turn artis eximiae. Literas 
quidem tuas, quoniam ita convenerat, diu expectabam; verum 
acceptis neque dum ullis, si quid mihi credis, non idcirco vete- 
rem meam erga te benevolent iam tantillum refrigescere sum 
passus ; immo vero qua tarditatis excusatione usus literarum 
initio es, ipsam illam te allaturum esse jam animo praesenseram, 
idque recte nostraeque necessitudini convenienter. Non enim 
in epistolarum ac salutationum momentis veram verti amicitiam 
volo, quae omnia ncta esse possunt, sed altis animi radicibus 
niti utrinque et sustinere se; cceptamque sinceris et Sanctis 
rationibus, etiamsi mutua cessarent officia, per omnem tamen 
vitam suspicione et culpa vacare: ad quam fovendam non tam 
script o sit opus, quam viva invicem virtutum recordatione. Nee 
continub, ut tu non scripseris, non erit quo illud suppleri offi- 
cium possit, scribit vicem tuam apud me tua probitas, verasque 
literas intimis sensibus meis exarat, scribit morum simplicitas, 
et recti amor 5 scribit ingenium etiam tuum, haudquaquam 
quotidianum, et majorem in modum te mihi commendat* 
Quare noli mihi, arcem illam medicinae tyrannicam nactus, 

1 



114 LIFE OF MILTON. 

these aspirings of his mind to the high pro- 

terrpres istos ostentare, ac si salutes tuas sexcentas velles, sub- 
ducta minutim ratiuncula, ad unum oranes a me reposcere, si 
forte ego, (quod ne siverit unquarn Deus,) amicitiae desertor 
fieremj atque amove terribile illud im?si')(io'pa quod cervici- 
bus nostris videris imposuisse, ut sine tua bona venia ne liceat 
aegrotare. Ego enim, ne nimis minitere, tui similes impossible 
est quin araem'; nam de caetero qaidem quid de me statuerit 
Dens nescio, illud certe, faivov po< s$cora 9 eltftp too a'/Xw, r5 
yia.K8 ive$*/ra%e. Nee tanto Ceres labore, ut in fabulis est, Libe- 
ram fertur quaesivisse filiam, quanto ego banc *'« kz>,8 ISeav, 
veluti pulcherrimam quandarn imaginem, per omnes rerum 
formas et facies : (jtoKXai yap poppa.? Tujv Acuftovicvv) dies noc- 
tesque indagare soleo, et quasi certis quibusdam vestigiis du- 
centem sector. Unde fit, ut qui, spretis quae vulgus prava re- 
rum aestimatione opinatur, id sentire et loqui et esse audetj 
quod summa per omne aevum sapientia optimum esse docuit, 
illi me protinus, sicubi reperiam, necessitate quadam adjun- 
gam. Quod si ego, sive natura sive meo fato, ita sum compara- 
tus, ut nulla contentione et laboribus meis ad tale decus et fas- 
tigium laudis ipse valeam emergere; tamen quo minus qui earn 
gloriam assecuti sunt, aut eo feliciter aspirant, illos semper 
colam et suspiciam nee dii puto nee homines prohibuerint. 
fe Caeterum jam curiositati tuae vis esse satisfactum scio. Multa 
solicite quaeris etiam quid cogitem. Audi, Theodote, verum 
in aurem ne rubeam, et sinito paulisper apud te grandia lo- 
quar: quid cogitem quaeris? ita me bonus Deus, immortali- 
tatem. Quid agam vero? Ttlspofyvw, et volare meditor : sed 
tenellis admodum adhuc pennis evehit se noster Pegasus ; hu- 
mile sapiamus." Dicam jam nunc serio quid cogitem, in hospi- 
tium juridicorum aliquod immigrare, sicubi amcena et umbrosa 
ambulatio est, quod et inter aliquot sodales, commodior illic 
habitatio, si domi manere, et opy^trjpioy svmp£'n l E(T'?e(JO-; quocunque 
libitum erit excurrere; ubi nunc sum, ut nosti, obscure et an- 
guste sum. De studiis etiam nostris fies certior. Graecorum res 
continuata lectione deduximus usquequo illi Graeci esse sunt 
desiti : Italorum in obscura re diu versati sumus, sub Longobar- 






LIFE OF MILTON. 115 

spect of poetic immortality, till the baleful 

dis et Francis et Germanis, ad illud tempus quo illis ab Ro- 
dolpho Germaniae rege concessa libertas est: exinde quid quae- 
que civitas suo marte gesserit, separatim legere praestabit. Tu 
vero quid? quousque rebus domesticis films familias imminebis 
urbanarum sodalitatum oblitus? quod, nisi bellum hoc nover- 
cale vel Dacico vel Sarmatico infestius sit,, debebis profecto 
maturare, ut ad nos saltern in hyberna concedas. Interim, quod 
sine tua raolestia fiat, Justinianum mihi Venetorurn historicum 
rogo mittas, ego mea fide aut in adventum tuum probe asser- 
vatum curabo; aut, si mavis, haud ita multo post ad te remis- 
sura. Vale." 

Loudini, Sep. 23, l63/\ 

TO CHARLES DEODATI. 
" Other friends in their letters generally reckon it sufficient 
to wish only a single health to their correspondents 3 I can as- 
sign a reason, however, why you so often repeat the salutation. 
For in addition to your old wishes, which are all that others are 
still able to offer, you would have me now consider your whole 
art and energy of medicine as engaged : since you bid me hail 
indefinitely, to the height of my desires, of my powers,— nay, 
beyond. You must surely have become of late the very house- 
steward of Health, you so lavishly dispense her whole stores 5 or 
Health herself is without doubt your obsequious attendant, you 
so imperiously like a king enjoin her obedience. Accept there- 
fore my congratulations, and allow me to return you my double 
thanks, on account both of your friendship and your profound 
skill. I had long indeed, in consequence of your arrangement, 
been expecting a letter from you 5 but, trust me, so far was I from 
feeling the slightest diminution of kindness towards you on 
account of its non-arrival, that I had even anticipated the very 
excuse for its delay which you yourself allege in the beginning 
of it : and this too justly, and without any derogation from 
our intimacy. For true friendship should not depend upon the 
balancings of letters and salutations, which may be all hypocri- 
tical 5 but should cling and sustain itself by the deep roots of 
the soul, and, originating in pure and hallowed principles, should 
through the whole of life, even without the intervention of 



116 LIFE OF MILTON. 

fury of politics diverted his fancy from where 
she 

Roll'd o'er Elysian flowers her amber stream, 

into a channel polluted with weeds and hor- 
rid with precipices. 

reciprocal civilities, avoid both suspicion and offence, cherished 
not so much by letters as by the lively remembrance of mutual 
virtues, Nor, should you happen to omit writing, would you 
be without a substitute in that office. Your integrity writes to 
me in your stead and inscribes its deep characters upon my in- 
most senses. Your simplicity, your honour, and your genius 
(genius of no common stamp) are my correspondents, and give 
me a still stronger impression in your favour. Do not then 
from your lordly eminence of medicine, hold out to me the 
threat of reclaiming, with rigid minuteness of calculation, your 
indefinitely-multiplied salutations, in the event (which God 
avert!) of my proving treacherous to friendship; but take off 
that dread injunction, which you seem to have laid upon me, 
of not daring to be sick without your leave. For, without your 
denunciations, I cannot help loving such as resemble you; since, 
whatever God may have determined concerning me in other 
respects, he has certainly implanted in me, if in any one, a ve- 
hement love of the to naXov : nor is Ceres herself represented 
in fable to have sought her daughter Proserpine with so much 
zeal, as I daily and nightly pursue and trace the steps of this 
fair idea, this enchanting image through every form and face 
of things — " for various are the shapes which people heaven." 
Hence he who, in contempt of the depraved estimates of po- 
pular opinion, dares to think and speak and be what genuine 
wisdom has universally pronounced best, by a kind of necessity 
becomes instantly, wherever I find him, an object of my ardent 
attachment. I myself may from nature or through destiny be 
so circumstanced as to be incapable, by any struggles or exer- 
tions of my own, of attaining such an honourable elevation: but 
neither gods, 1 trust, nor men, will forbid my looking up to 
such as have attained, or are successfully labouring to attain it, 
V/ith reverence and veneration, • 



LIFE OF MILTOK. 117 

1/ Allegro and II Penseroso made their 
first public appearance in the edition of our 
author's poems which was published by him- 
self in 1645; and we have no positive testi- 
mony to determine the precise time of their 

" Your curiosity will now,, I know, expect some satisfaction. 
Among other subjects of anxious inquiry, you ask me, upon 
what I am thinking. Hear me, my heaven-bestowed friend, 
but in a whisper to spare my blushes; and permit me for a 
moment to utter great things. Do you ask me, " Upon what I 
am thinking?" So help me heaven, upon immortality. But 
what am I doing? I am fledging myself, and meditate a flight. 
My Pegasus however as yet soars only on slender pinions: let 
me moderate my thoughts. I will now tell you what is my 
serious project: — to remove into some inn of court, where I 
may find pleasant and shady walks j because it is- both more 
convenient to reside among a few companions, if I choose to 
stay at homej and I shall have a better point of setting off 
whenever I wish to go abroad. My present abode, you know* 
is both gloomy and confined. You shall also be informed of 
my studies. I have read straightforward the history of the 
Greeks, till they lost their title to the name; and have lingered 
in the dark ages of Italy, among the Lombards the Franks and 
the Germans, down to the period in which they obtained liberty 
from the Emperor Rodolph. From that epoch it will be better 
to read separately the exertions of each distinct state, 

" And what are you doing? How long will you allow your 
domestic engagements, as a son, to interfere with your city- 
friendships? Surely, if this stepmother's warfare be not more 
severe than that of Dacia or Sarmatia, you will despatch it 
speedily, and join us in winter-quarters. In the mean while I 
shall be obliged to you, if you can without inconvenience lend 
me Giustiniani's History of Venice; and I will engage either 
to take the utmost care of it till your arrival, or (if you chuse) 
in a very short time to return it to you. Farewell." 
London, Sept. 23, \637. 
o 



118 LIFE OF MILTON. 

production. There is reason however to 
suppose that they were written in the inter- 
val between the composition of Coinus and 
that of Lycidas. The opening lines of the 
latter poem seem to refer to some work of a 
more recent date than the Mask, since the 
representation of which three years had now 
elapsed; and we cannot, with the least pre- 
tence of probability, assign their origin to 
any other portion of their author's life than 
to that which was passed at Morton. The 
evidence of their ripened excellence would 
not allow us to ascribe them to his more 
youthfil years, even if the accurate and cir- 
cumstantial account, which has been trans- 
mitted to us, of the produce of those years 
had left us any doubt upon the subject. 
With his compositions during his residence 
in Italy we are so particularly acquainted as 
not to be permitted to hesitate when we ex- 
clude from their number the objects of our re- 
ference; and the character also of these pieces 
establishes them k to be properly and strictly 
English. Their lineaments and their tints 
are so specific, and so peculiarly genuine as 
to prove them to be drawn from the vivid na- 
ture before the poet's eye, and not from the 

k See a note in the Appendix on a letter of Sir William Jones's 
referring to the time and the place when and where these poems 
were composed. 



L-IFE OF MILTON. 119 

dimmer reflection of his mind. The land- 
scape indeed, with all its shades, is of his 
own country, and when he speaks of " towers 
and battlements" 

Bosom'd high in tufted trees, 
Where perhaps some beauty lies 
The Cynosure of neighb 'ring eyes., 

we may suppose that his sight was directed 
immediately to the woods and the mansion 
of Harefield. 

These poems, then, must he received as 
the indisputable natives of our island ; and 
they cannot be considered as born after 
their parent's return from the continent, 
when his talents were withdrawn from the 
Muses ; and when, immersed in the capital 
and in polemics, his thought could not easily 
escape to play and to cull flowers among 
the scenery of the country. I/Allegro and 
II Penseroso therefore were certainly writ- 
ten at Horton, and probably at no long pe- 
riod before the Lycidas, which was the last 
of our author's works while he resided with 
his father. They were unquestionably com- 
posed in the happiest humour of the poet's 
mind, when his fancy was all sunshine and 

no cloud, or, to obstruct her view, 

Star interposed. . 

We may contemplate them not as the ef- 
fects or qualities, (if the allusion may be par- 



120 LIFE OF MILTON. 

doned,) but as the very substance of poetry, 
as its " hidden soul untied," and brought for- 
ward to our sight. 

It is not easy to adjust the precedency 
between these victorious efforts of the de- 
scriptive Muse. No passage in II Penseroso 
is perhaps equally happy with the follow- 
ing in L'Allegro: 

And ever against eating cares 

Lap me in soft Lydian airs, 

Married to immortal verse, 

Such as the meeting soul may pierce 

In notes with many a winding bout 

Of linked sweetness long drawn out, 

With wanton heed and giddy cunning, 

The melting voice through mazes running, 

Untwisting all the chains that tie 

The hidden soul of harmony. 

But if my judgment were to decide, I should 
award the palm, though with some hesita- 
tion, to II Penseroso. The portrait of con- 
templation; the address to Philomel; the 
image of the moon, wandering through hea- 
ven's pathless way; the slow swinging of the 
curfeu over some wide- watered shore; the 
flaming of the night-lamp in some lonely 
tower; the unsphering of the spirit of Plato 
to disclose the residence of the unbodied 
soul; the arched walks of twilight groves; 
the mysterious dream by the murmuring 
waters; the sweet music of the friendly spirit 



LIFE OF MILTON. 121 

of the wood; the ] pale and studious cloister; 
the religious light thrown through the storied 
windows ; the pealing organ, and finally the 
peaceful hermitage — form together such a 
mass of poetic imagery as was never before 
crowded into an equal space: the impression 
made by it on the imagination is to be felt, 
and not explained. 

Although ihese poems obtained some 
early notice, the number of their admirers 
was for a long time small. Even from the 
wits of our Augustan age, as the age of Ad- 
dison and Pope has sometimes been called, 
their share of notice was inconsiderable; and 
it is in only what may be regarded as the 
present generation, that they have acquired 
any large proportion of their just praise. 
Their reputation seems to be still increasing; 

1 " Perhaps/' says Mr. Warton on this line, " To walk the 
studious cloisters pale/' 

The studious cloister's pale." 

If this unlucky " perhaps" were to be regarded, the beauty of 
the line would be injured, and its propriety annihilated. Paie, 
as an epithet to cloister, is most happily poetic, and holds a 
large and animated picture to the imagination. It shows to us 
the ghostly light of the place, and it shows to us also the sickly 
cheek of timorous superstition, the wan and faded counte- 
nance of studious and contemplative melancholy. The cloister's 
pale, or fence, is tautological and weak; and to walk a pale, 
which, if it mean any thing, must mean to walk upon a pale, is 
a feat of rather difficult accomplishment, 



122 LIFE OF MILTON. 

and we may venture to predict that it will 
yet increase, till some of those great vicissi- 
tudes, to which all that is human is perpe- 
tually exposed and which all that is human 
must eventually experience, shall blot out our 
name and our language, and bury us in bar- 
barism. But even amid the ruins of Britain, 
Milton will survive: Europe will preserve 
one portion of him; and his native strains 
will be cherished in the expanding bosom of 
the great queen of the Atlantic, when his 
own London may present the spectacle of 
Thebes, and his Thames roll a silent and 
solitary stream through heaps of blended 
desolation. 01 

ni I am reminded on this occasion of a beautiful passage in 
the " Essay on the dramatic character of Sir John Falstaff," 
written by the late Maurice Morgann, Esq. " Yet whatever 
may be the neglect of some, or the censure of others, there are 
those who firmly believe that this wild and uncultivated * Bar- 
larian has not obtained one half of his fame." When the 
hand of time shall have brushed off his present editors and 
commentators, and when the very name of Voltaire, and even 
the memory of the language in which he has written, shall be 
no more, the Apalachian mountains the banks of the Ohio 
and the plains of Sciola shall resound with the accents of this 
barbarian, In his native tongue he shall roll the genuine pas- 
sions of nature: nor shall the griefs of Lear be alleviated, or the 
charms and wit of Rosalind be abated by time," p. 64. 

This Essay forms a more honourable monument to the me- 
mory of Shakspeare than any which has been reared to him by 
the united labours of his commentators. The portrait, of 

* Shakspeare, so called by Voltaire. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 123 

A few months before the composition of 

which I have exhibited only a part, is drawn with so just so 
discriminating and so vivid a pencil as to be unequalled, un- 
less it be by the celebrated delineation of the same great dra- 
matist by the hand of Dryden. 

With the name of Maurice Morgann, who has fondled my 
infancy in his arms, who was the friend of my youth, who ex- 
panded the liberality of my opening heart, and first taught me 
to think and to judge, — with this interesting name so many 
sadly-pleasing recollections are associated that I cannot dismiss 
it without reluctance. He was my friend: but he was the 
friend also of his species. The embrace of his mind was am- 
ple ; that of his benevolence was unbounded. With great rec- 
titude of understanding, he possessed a fancy that was always 
creative and playful. On every subject, for on every subject . 
he thought acutely and deeply, his ideas were original and 
striking. Even when he was in error he continued to be specious 
and to please : and he never failed of your applause, though he 
might sometimes of your assent. When your judgment coyly 
held back, your imagination yielded to his seductive addresses; 
and you wished him to be right when you were forced to pro- 
nounce that he was wrong. This is spoken only of those webs 
which his fancy perpetually spuii and dipped in the rain-bow : 
his heart was always in the right. With a mind of too fine a 
texture for business, too theoretical and abstract to be executive, 
he discharged with honour the office of under secretary of state 
when the late marquis * of Lansdown was for the first time 
in power; and he was subsequently sent by that nobleman 
across the Atlantic as the intended legislator of Canada. His 
public and his private life were impelled by the same principles 
to the same object; — by the love of liberty and virtue to the 

* This able and, to decide from the consistency of his public 
conduct, this upright statesman died on the 7th of May 1805, 
and bequeathed his whig principles and virtues to his second son, 
Lord Henry Petty, who lately filled the office of Chancellor of the 
Exchequer. 



124 LITE OE MILTON. 

his Lycidas, ouv author's domestic happiness 

happiness of man. If his solicitous and enlightened represen- 
tations had experienced attention, the temporary and the abid- 
ing evils of the American contest would not have existed ; and 
the mother and her offspring would still have been supported 
and supporting with their mutual embrace. From a long in- 
tercourse with the world he acquired no suspicion, no narrow- 
ness, no hardness, no moroseness. With the simplicity and 
candour, he retained to the last the cheerfulness and the sensi- 
bility of childhood. The tale of distress, which he never staid 
to investigate, passed immediately through his open ear into 
his responsive heart j and his fortune, small as his disinterest- 
edness had suffered it to remain, was instantly communicated 
to relieve. His humanity comprehended the whole animated 
creation 5 and nothing could break the tenor of his temper but 
the spectacle of oppression or of cruelty. His failings (and 
the most favoured of our poor species are not without failings) 
were few, and untinctured with malignity. High as he was 
placed by nature, he was not above the littleness of vanity; and 
kindlily as were the elements blended in him, his manner would 
sometimes betray that contempt of others, which the wisest are 
perhaps the least prone to entertain, and which the best are the 
most studious to conceal. Though he courted praise, and was 
not nice respecting the hand which tendered it or the form in 
which it came, yet has he refused it in the most honourable 
shape, and when offered to him by the public. He has been 
importuned in vain to give a second edition of his Essay on 
Falstaff; and his repeated injunctions have impelled his execu 
trix to an indiscriminate destruction of his papers, some of 
which, in the walks of politics metaphysics and criticism, 
would have planted a permanent laurel on his grave. 

Such were his frailties and inconsistencies, the objects only 
of a doubtful smile: — but his virtues and his talents made him 
the delight of the social, the instruction or the comfort of the 
solitary hour. 

Though he had been accustomed to contemplate the awful 
crisis of death with more terror than belonged to his innocent 



LIFE OF MILTON. 125 

had received a shock by the death" of his 
mother; and, with the concurrence of his fa- 
ther, he resolved at this time on an excursion 
to the continent, with a view more particu- 
larly to the classic region of Italy. He was 
now in his thirtieth year: his large mind 
was amply stored with the spoils of universal 
knowledge; and, from a wider conversation 
with the living world, his character now de- 
manded its last accomplishment and polish — 
that line softening, as it were, into life which 
makes the sculpture breathe, and places it 
among the wonders of the world. On the 
intimation of his design, he received a letter 
from the celebrated Sir Henry Wotton, who 

life or to his generally intrepid breast, he met the consumma- 
tion without alarm, and expired with as much serenity as he 
had lived. 7'his event happened at his house in Knightsbridge, 
in the seventy-seventh year of his age, on the 28th of March, 
3 802. 

Xaioel Vale! 

I shall never cease to think with a sigh of the grave in which 
I saw your body composed, till my own shall require the same 
pious covering of dust, and shall solicit, with far inferior claims 
yet haply not altogether in vain, for the same fond charity of a 
tear. C. S. 

n On the 3d of April, 1037, as is recorded on her monument 
in Horton church. 

° Abeuntem vir ciarissimus, Henricus Woottonus, qui ad Ve- 
netos orator Jacobi regis diu fuerat, et votis et prseceptis, eunti 
peregre sane utilissimis eleganti epistola prsescriptis, me amicis- 
sime prosequutus est. Def. Sec, P. W. v. 231. — — Wotton was 
a scholar and a poet, as well as a friend of poets. He wrote 



126 LIFE OF MILTON. 

had resided at Venice as ambassador from 
James the first and was now provost of Eton. 
This' letter shall be inserted as evincing the 
reputation and consequence of Milton, while 
it impresses us with a favourable idea of the 
taste and the friendliness of its writer. 

« SIR The College, April 18th, 1638. 

" It was a special favour, when 
you lately bestowed upon me here the first 
taste of your acquaintance, though no longer 
than to make me know, that I wanted more 
time to value it, and to enjoy it rightly. And 
in truth, if I could then have imagined your 
farther stay in these parts, which I under- 
stood afterward by Mr. II. I would have 
been bold, in our vulgar phrase, to mend my 
draught, for you left me with an extreme 
thirst; and to have begged your conversa- 
tion again, jointly with your said learned 
friend, at a poor meal or two, that we might 
have bandied together some good authors of 

a tragedy called Tnncredo, of which I know nothing but the 
name ; and a few odes, which, as Mr. Warton informs me, have 
the merits of some elegance. He was the friend of Donne 
and of Cowley. — " Our common friend, Mr. R." in this letter, 
is probably Rouse the Bod. Librarian, to whom Milton has ad- 
dressed a Latin ode: and <e the late Mr. R's poems," Mr. War- 
ton determines to be the poems of Thomas Randolph, M. A. 
Fellow of Trin. Coll. Cambridge, who died March 17, 1634. 



LITE OF MILTON. 127 

the ancient time, among which I observed 
you to have been familiar. 

" Since your going, you have charged me 
with new obligations, both for a very kind 
letter from you, dated the sixth of this month, 
and for a dainty piece of entertainment that 
came therewith; wherein I should much com- 
mend the tragical part, if the lyrical did not 
ravish with a certain Doric delicacy in your 
songs and odes, wherein I must plainly con- 
fess to have seen yet nothing parallel in our 
language, ipsa mollifies. But I must not omit 
to tell you, that I now only owe you thanks 
for intimating unto me, how modestly so- 
ever, the true artificer. For the work itself 
I had viewed some good while before with 
singular delight, having received it from our 
common friend Mr. R. in the very close of 
the late R/s poems printed at Oxford ; where- 
unto it is added, as I now suppose, that the 
accessory might help out the principal, ac- 
cording to the art of stationers, and leave the 
reader con la bocca dolce. 

" Now, sir, concerning your travels, where- 
in I may challenge a little more privilege of 
discourse with you, I suppose you will not 
blanch Paris in your way. Therefore I have 
been bold to trouble } r ou with a few lines to 



128 LIFE OF MILTON. 

Mr. M. B. p whom you shall easily find attend- 
ing the young lord S. as his governor; and you 
may surely receive from him good directions 
for shaping of your farther journey into Italy, 
where he did reside by my choice some time for 
}he king, after mine own recess from Venice. 

" I should think, that your best line will 
be through the whole length of France to 
Marseilles, and thence by sea to Genoa, 
whence the passage into Tuscany is as diur- 
nal as a Gravesend barge. I hasten, as you 
do, to Florence or Sienna, the rather to tell 
you a short story, from the interest you have 
given me in your safety. 

" At Sienna I was tabled in the house of 
one Alberto Scipioni, an old Roman cour- 
tier in dangerous times, having been steward 
to the Duca di Pagliano, who with all his fa- 
mily was strangled, save this only man, that 
escaped by foresight of the tempest. With 

P I suspect that these initials should be, "W.B. and that they 
refer to Mr. William Bedell, who was chaplain to Sir H. Wotton 
during his embassy to Venice. Bedell was one of the most able 
and learned divines of the seventeenth century. He resided eight 
years at Venice, where he was honoured with the friendship of 
Father Paul, (or Peter Sarpi,) the celebrated historian of the 
Council of Trent. On his return to England, Bedell was raised 
in succession to the provostship of Trin. Coll. Dublin, and the 
bishopric of Kilmore. As he was a man of a liberal mind, and an 
independent spirit, we may justly wonder that his merits couid 
elevate him to this eminence in the church. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 129 

him I had 'often much chat of those affairs; 
into which he took pleasure to look back 
from his native harbour; and at my depar- 
ture towards Rome, which had been the cen- 
tre of his experience, I had won confidence 
enough to beg his advice how I might carry 
myself securely there, without offence of 
others or of mine own conscience. 4 Signor 
Amico mio/ says he, ' i pensieri stretti, et il 
viso sciolto;' that is, ' your thoughts close 
and your countenance loose/ will go safely 
over the whole world. Of which Delphian 
oracle (for so I have found it) your judgment 
doth need no commentary ; and therefore, 
sir, I will commit you with it to the best of 
all securities, God's dear love, remaining 

" Your friend, as much at command 
as any of longer date, 

" H.Wotton/' 

" P. S. Sir, I have expressly sent this by 
my foot-boy to prevent your departure with- 
out some acknowledgment from me of the 
receipt of your obliging letter, having my- 
self through some business, I know not how, 
neglected the ordinary conveyance. In any 
part where I shall understand you fixed, I 
shall be glad and diligent to entertain you 

K 



130 LIFE OF MILTON. 

with home-novel ties, even for some fomen- 
tation of our friendship, too soon interrupted 
in the cradle." 

Not long after the receipt of this letter 
he began his journey; and, accompanied only 
by a servant who attended him through the 
whole of his travels, proceeded immediately 
to Paris; where he was received with distinc- 
tion by Lord Scudamore, p the ambassador 
from England. By this nobleman he was 
introduced, with much honourable attention, 
to the famous Grotius, whom he had ex- 
pressed a particular desire to see, and who 
then resided in the capital of France as the 
minister of Christina, the eccentric queen of 
Sweden, Were we able to ascertain with 
precision all the circumstances »of this inter- 
view between two extraordinary men, emi- 
nently raised above the level of their species 
by their talents and their attainments, we 
should probably acquire nothing from our 
knowledge to excite our wonder, or, if our 
expectations were high, to save us from dis- 
appointment. In the formality and coldness 

p Nobilissimus vir, Thomas Scudamorus, Parisiis humanis- 
sirae accepitj meq; Hugoni Grotio viro eruditissimo, quem in- 
visere cupiebam, suo nomine et suorum uno atq; altero dedu- 
cente^ commendavit. Def. Sec. P. W. v. 23 J . 



LIFE OF MILTON. 131 

of a first meeting, and especially where one 
party would be restrained by the conscious- 
ness of having much to lose and the other 
by the felt impropriety of pressing upon esta- 
blished rank and reputation, no great dis- 
play of erudition or brilliant exchanges of 
fancy were likely to take place. Compli- 
ments requited with civilities ; some inqui- 
ries respecting the traveller's plans, and some 
advice on the subject of their execution con- 
stituted perhaps the whole of the conference 
between these two memorable men. 

After the delay only of a few days at Pa- 
ris, our traveller renewed his progress and, 

" fired with ideas of fair Italy," 

pursued the direct road to Nice; where a ves- 
sel, readily procured by the letters which he 
brought from Lord Scudamore to the mer- 
chants, received and landed him at Genoa. 
From this city he passed immediately through 
Leghorn and Pisa to Florence, and on the 
banks of the Arno, rendered famous by the 
purity of the Tuscan language which was 
spoken on them and by the learning and ta- 
lents that frequented them, he made what 
may be considered as his first pause. 

Here he resided for two months; and his 
conversation and manners soon introduced 



132 LIFE OF MILTON. 

him into the high and literary circle, where 
he speedily made himself the object of very 
general admiration. He obtained admission 
into those private academies, which had been 
instituted under the genial patronage of the 
Medici for the advancement of literature 
and for the cementing of friendships among 
its votaries. In these assemblies, in which 
" it was the custom/' q as he tells us, " that 
every one should give some proof of his wit 
and reading," many of his productions, either 
those of his younger j^ears or st those/ which 
he had shifted in scarcity of books and con- 
veniences to patch up among them/' were 
received with much applause, " and with 
written encomiums, which the Italian is not 
forward to bestow on men of this side the 
Alps." 

It was at this time that Carlo Dati, a no- 
bleman of Florence, and Antonio Francini, 
of a rank only one step lower, both men of 
talents and literary renown, presented our 
traveller with an offering of their respect, 
one in an Italian ode of considerable merit, 
predicting his future greatness, and the other 
in a Latin address, in which admiration is 
expressed in terms of extreme and almost ex- 
travagant panegyric. 

* The Reason of Church Gov. P. W. i. 11 9. r Ibid. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 133 

Beside the two whom we have now men- 
tioned, the English bard could number on 
the list of his friends, conciliated by his learn- 
ing talents and manners, the respectable 
literary names of Gaddi, Frescobaldi, Col- 
tellino, Buonmattei, Clementillo, and Mala- 
testi. s The applause and respect which he 
obtained seems to have been unlimited; and 
the transalpine scholars appear to have been 
lost in surprise at the spectacle, presented to 
them, of a native of Britain, a country just 
emerging, as they imagined, from barbarism, 
who to an acquaintance, not superficial, with 
all the sciences united a profound knowledge 
of classic and Italian letters; whose mind 
was at once sublime and deep, accurate and 
comprehensive, powerful and acute; patient 
to follow judgment in the gradual investiga- 
tion of philosophical truth, yet delighted to 
fly with the more aerial offspring of the brain 
on the high and expatiating wing of imagi- 
nation. Of all his rare accomplishments and 
talents however, none perhaps would more 
forcibly strike the attention and win the re- 
gard of the Italians than his absolute com- 

s A work called " La Tina/' or the '* Wine-Press/' by An- 
tonio Malatesti, and dedicated to Milton while at Florence, was 
found on a bookstall and purchased by Mr. Brand. He gave it to 
Mr. Hollis, and Mr.Hollis sent it, with Milton's works and his 
life by Toland, in 175S to the Academy della Crusca. 



134 LIFE OF MILTON. 

niand of their language and the affection 
which he discovered for it. So perfect was 
his knowledge of it that he was frequently 
consulted respecting its niceties by the Aca- 
demy della Crusca, instituted expressly for 
its preservation and improvement. So strong 
was his attachment to Italian literature that, 
in a letter to Buonmattei, in which he offers 
some advice to that author then on the point 
of publishing an Italian grammar, he declares 
that " * neither Athens herself with her lucid 
Ilissus, nor ancient Rome with the banks of 
her Tiber could so entirely detain him, as to 
prevent him from visiting with fondness the 
vale of the Arab and the hills of Fesole." 

During this visit to Florence, he saw and 
conversed with the great Galileo, that me- 
morable victim of priestly ignorance and su- 
perstition. For his philosophical opinions, 
which were supposed to contradict the asser- 
tions of the Holy Scriptures on the subject of 
the earth's figure and motion, this illustrious 
man had been imprisoned for five months by 
the Inquisition; and was now resident near 
Florence in a state of aggravated infirmity 

1 Nee me tarn ipsse Athenae Atticse, cum illo suo pellucido 
Ilisso, nee ilia vetus Roma, sua Tiberis ripa, retinere valuerunt, 
quin saepe Arnum vestrum, et Faesulanos illos colles invisere 
amem. Epis. Fam. P. W. vi. 118. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 135 

from age, sickness, and mental u distress. 
Rolli, the Italian biographer of Milton, sup- 
poses that from his intercourse with the 
Tuscan astronomer the English poet gained 
those ideas, approaching to the Newtonian, 
respecting our planetary system which he 
has discovered in the Paradise Lost. If this 
supposition be just, it must be the subject of 
our surprise as it is of our regret that a sys- 
tem which, with its obvious simplicity, would 
enforce the conviction of any philosophic 
and acute mind even without the demonstra- 
tion of Newton's mathematics, should not 
have obtained our poet's entire assent; and 
thus have saved him from that awkward halt- 
ing between two opinions which incidentally 
disfigures a few pages of his immortal epic. 

On his leaving Florence, where he staid, 
as we have observed, two months, our tra- 
veller proceeded through Sienna to Rome. 
In this city of old and of modern renown, 
the mistress of the world at one time by her 
arms and laws, and of Europe at another 
by her policy and the engine of perverted 
religion, he passed two months in the con- 

u " There it was (in Italy) that I found and visited the fa- 
mous Galileo, grown old, a prisoner to the Inquisition, for think- 
ing in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican 
licensers thought." A Speech for Unlicensed Printing. P. W. 
1. 313. 



136 LIFE OF MILTON. 

templation of the wonders of her ancient and 
modern art, and in the society made more 
interesting by the friendship of her scholars 
and her great men. The kindness of Holste- 
nius, the learned keeper of the Vatican library, 
not only opened to him the curiosities of 
that grand repository of literature, but intro- 
duced him to the attentions of the Cardinal 
Barberini; x who at that time possessed the 
whole delegated sovereignty of Rome under 
his uncle, Urban VIII. At a great musical 
entertainment, which this opulent Cardinal 
gave with a magnificence truly Roman, he 
looked for our traveller among the crowd at 
the door, and brought him, almost by the 
hand, into the assembly/ These benefits and 
favours were not forgotten by him; and the 
letter, which he addressed to Holstenius from 
Florence, constitutes their acknowledgment 
and requital. 

x Turn nee aliter crediderim, quam quae tu * de me verba fe- 
ceris ad praestantissimum Cardin. Franc. Barberinum, iis factum 
esse, ut cum ille paucis post diebus axpoay.ee illud Musicum 
magniflcentia vere Ptomana publice exhiberet, ipse me tanta in 
turba quaesitum ad fores expectans, et pene manu prehensum 
persane honorifice" intro admiserit. Epist. Fam. P. W. vi. 120. 

y Mr. Todd, the industrious editor of Milton, has mentioned, 
on the authority of a MS. of Dr. Bargrave, that at this time every 
foreign nation had a particular guardian assigned to it at Rome in 
the person of one of the Cardinals ; and that Barberini was the ap- 
pointed guardian of the English. Todd's Life of Mil. p. xxviii, 

* Holstenius. 



LITE OF MILTON. 137 

If he was honoured with lavish panegy- 
ric by Francini and Dati at Florence, he 
was celebrated in a strain of equal though 
more compressed praise by Salsiili and Sel- 
vaggi at Rome; by the former in a Latin te- 
trastic, and by the latter in a distich in the 
same language. At his next removal we shall 
see our traveller distinguished by still more 
lofty compliment, in the vehicle indeed of 
still inferior verse: and for that opportunity 
we shall reserve any observations which may 
be suggested to us by the subject. At present 
we will transcribe and, according to our usual 
practice, translate the two Roman produc- 
tions for the amusement of our readers. 

Cede Melesj cedat depressa Mincius urna, 

Sebetus Tassum desinat usque loqui. 

At Tharaesis victor cunctis ferat altior undas ; 

Nam per te, Milto, par tribus unus erit. 

Salsilli. 

MeleSj and Mincius! now more humbly glide : 
Tasso's z Sebetus ! now resign thy pride. 
Supreme of rivers Thames henceforth shall be: 
His Milton makes him equal to the three. 

Grsecia Maeoniderm jactet sibi Roma Maronemj 

Anglia Miltonum jactat utrique parem. 

Selvaggi. 

Greece! vaunt your Homer's 3 Rome! your Maro's fame: 

England in Milton boasts an equal name. 

z The Sebeto, a small brook near Naples. The SebethoSj as 
it was anciently called, was in former times a stream of more 
consequence; and its present diminutive size may be ascribed to 
the operations of the contiguous volcano. 



138 LIFE OF MILTON. 

It was not long before the English bard 
was supplied with an opportunity of repay- 
ing to one of his Roman panegyrists the debt 
of praise which had been thus contracted. 
On the occasion of Salsilli's illness, Milton 
sent to him those scazons, which are rich in 
poetic imagery though inaccurate in their 
metrical construction. 2 The concluding part 
of this short poem is highly beautiful and 
deserving of insertion. 

O dulce divum munus! O Salus Hebes 
Germana ! Tuq; Phoebe, morborum terror, 
Pythone caeso, sive tu magis Paean 
Libenter audis, hie tuns sacerdos est. 
Querceta Fauni, vosq; rore vinoso 
Colles benigni, mitis Evandri sedes, 
Siquid salubre vallibus frondet vestris, 
Levamen aegro ferte certatim vati. 
Sic ille, charis redditus rursum Musis, 
Vicina dulci prata mulcebit cantu. 
Ipse inter atros emirabitur lucos 
Numa, ubi beatum degit otium aeternum, 
Suam reclinis semper jEgeriam spectans. 
Tumidusq; et ipse Tibris, hinc delinitus., 
Spei favebit annual colonorum: 
Nee in sepulchris ibit obsessum reges, 
Nimium sinistro laxus irruens loro: 
Sed fraena melius temperabit undarum, 
Adusq; curvi salsa regna Portumni. 

z In their scazons, the Greeks use a spondee in the fifth place, 
but the Latins always an iambic. In the poem before us, Milton 
has violated this rule of Roman prosody in no less than twenty- 
one instances, by inserting either a spondee or an anapaest in the 
place in question. This is to be guilty not of false quantity, but 
of an erroneous fabric of verse. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 139 

O Health/ 1 sweet blessing from the empyreal sphere ! 

Sister of Hebe, deign thy presence here] 

Thou Phoebus too, or, if it please thee more, 

By Paean's name thy godhead we implore: 

(Since Python fell, the pale diseases fly, 

Pierced with thy shafts and shrinking from thine eye:) 

Chase sickness hence: — it is thy priest who pines. 

Ye groves of Faunus, and ye hills, whose vines 

Weep balmy dews, where mild Evander sway'd, 

If in your bloomy lawn or fragrant shade 

One plant of healing energy be bred, 

Haste! bring it to your drooping poet's bed : 

That the sweet Muses, on his warbling tongue, 

Once more may court your echoes with their song: 

That pensive Numa in his twilight grove, 

"Where, tranced in endless rest and holy love, 

He dwells on his iEgeria's spotless form, 

May feel new raptures from the tuneful charm: 

That Tiber's self, enamour' d of the lay, 

May check his fury in its devious way : 

INTor, prone to raze the works of buried pride, 

Urge his left bank, b but waft a patient tide - } 

And, faithful to the labours of the swain, 

Wed his innoxious waters to the main. 

It was probably at the Cardinal Barbe- 
rini's concert, which we have mentioned, that 
Milton was first struck with the charms and the 

a The classical reader need not be informed that the simpli- 
city and expressive conciseness of the original is unattainable in 
any, or at least is unattained in this translation. The " reclinis 
spectans" forms a beautiful image, which is omitted, or inade- 
quately expressed in the English. 

h The left bank of the Tiber at Rome is the lowest, and 
consequently the most liable to be overflowed. The works of 
buried pride are the (C monumenta regis" of Horace, the tomb 
of Numa. 



140 LIFE OF MILTON. 

inimitable voice of Leonora Baroni, which 
had been made the general theme of their 
praise by the contemporary poets of Italy. 
Of the three excellent Latin epigrams, in which 
he has celebrated this fascinating woman, the 
second is so admirable that our readers would 
have cause to complain of us if we were to 
refer them from our own page to any other 
for the gratification of perusing it. 

AD LEONORAM ROMM CANENTEM. 
Ep. VII. 

Altera Torquatum cepit Leonora poetam, 

Cujus ab insano eessit amore furens. 
Ah miser! ille tuo quanto felicius aevo 

Perditus et propter te, Leonora, foret ! 
Et te Pieria sensisset voce canentem, 

Aurea maternse fila movere lyrae ; 
Quamvis Dircaeo torsisset lumina Pentheo 

Ssevior, aut totus desipuisset inersj 
Ta tamen errantes caeca vertigine sensus 

Voce eadem poteras composuisse tuaj 
Et poteras, aegro spirans sub corde, quietem 

Flexanimo cantu restituisse sibi. 

TO LEONORA, SINGING AT ROME. 

Another c Leonora's charms inspired 

The love that Tasso's phrensied senses fired. 

c Leonora of Este, with whom Tasso was deeply enamoured. 
The melancholy malady of this great poet is too generally known 
to make any comment on it necessary. His madness and the 
name of his mistress have been of admirable service to Milton 
in this epigram. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 141 

More blest had been his fate were this his age j 
And you the inspirer of his amorous rage. 
Oh ! had he heard the wonders of your song, 
As leads your voice its liquid maze along: 
Or seen you, in your mother's 01 right, command 
The lyre, while rapture wakes beneath your hand 5 
By Pentheus' wildness though his brain were tost, 
Or his worn sense in sullen slumber lost, 
His soul had check'd her wand'rings at the strain : 
The soothing charm had lull'd his stormy brain: 
Or, breathing with creative power, had driven 
Death from his heart, and open'd it to heaven. 

This lady is supposed to have been cele- 
brated by Milton in her own language, and 
to have been the object of his love in his Ita- 
lian sonnets. Of these effusions of our poet's 
gallantry I will not hazard an opinion. The 
purity of their language has been commended 
by Italian critics; and for any affected and 
forced thoughts, which may be distinguish- 
able in them, the character of the Italian 
taste at that time may be admitted as an 
apology. One of these short pieces, as ex- 
hibiting a picture of some of the principal 
features of the poet's own mind, may de- 
serve to be transcribed. We shall soon see 
this boasted fortitude demanded for severe 
trials, and we shall find that it did not shrink. 

d Adriana of Mantua, equally celebrated with her daughter 
for her voice and her lyre. 



142 LIFE OF MILTON. 

VI. 

Giovane piano e simplicette amante, 

Poi che fuggir me stesso in dubbio sono, 

Madonna, a voi del raio cuor l'humil dono 
Farodivoto; io certo a prove tante 
L'hebbi fedele, intrepido, costante, 

De pensieri legg'iadro, accorto e buono; 

Quando rugge il gran mondo, e scocca il tuono, 
S'arma di se e d'intero diamante : 

Tanto del forse, e d'invidia sicuro, 
Di timori, e speranze, al popol use., 

Quanto d' ingegno, e d' alto valor vago, 

E di cetra sonora, e delle muse : 
Sol troverete in tal parte men duro,, 
Ove Amor mise l'insanabil ago. 

Lady , to you a youth unknown to art, 

(Who fondly from himself in thought would fly,) 

Devotes the faith, truth, spirit, constancy, 
And firm yet feeling temper of his heart j 
Proved strong by trials for life's arduous part: 

When shakes the world and thunders roll on high, 

All adamant, it dares the storm defy, 
Erect, unconscious of the guilty start : 

Not more above fear, envy, low desire, 
And all the tyrants of the vulgar breast, 

Than prone to hail the heaven-resounding lyre, 
High worth, and Genius of the Muse possest: 
Unshaken and entire, — and only found 
Not proof against the shaft when Love directs the wound. 

An eye, like Milton's, created for the most 
exquisite perception of beauty in all her 
shapes, and an imagination ever solicit- 
ously vagrant for gratification, even in the 
regions of Arabian fiction and of Gothic 



LITE OF MILTON. 143 

romance, could not be insensible to those 
opportunities of luxurious indulgence which 
the capital of Italy afforded. Milton, as we 
cannot reasonably doubt, studied the forms 
of ideal nature, not only as they existed in 
the marbles of ancient Greece, but also as they 
breathed and glowed in the tints of modern 
Italy. We may be certain that he contem- 
plated with delight the animated walls of the 
Vatican, and that his genius kindled and ex- 
panded from the sublime frescoes of Michael 
Angelo and the milder and more charac- 
teristic canvass of Raffaelle. Imagination 
will converse with imagination through the 
medium of diversified art; and, whether 
words e or forms be the exciters or conductors, 
the idea will flash from mind to mind, and 

e To speak with philosophical precision,, forms are the sole 
means by which the ideas of one mind can be imparted to an- 
other j for words merely stimulate the mind, to which they are 
addressed, to form ideas or phantasms of its own. When we see 
the Hercules or the Transfiguration, we behold the very iden- 
tical mental representation, in its immediate transcript, from 
which Glycon fashioned his marble or Raffaelle traced his lines : 
but when we read the description of Paradise or the vale of Tempe, 
our minds are only urged, within certain limits and under some 
particular modifications, to form a creation of their own. If 
fifty artists, without any intercourse with each other, were to 
draw these scenes, not one of the draughts would be precisely 
like another, though they might all be justified by the words of 
the poet or the historian. 



144 LIFE OF MILTON. 

will increase the mass of etherial fire wherever 
it is received. The mind of Milton unquestion- 
ably maintained an intercourse with the minds 
of the great masters of the pencil, and pro- 
bably derived from them what was afterwards 
matured into the conceptions of his Satan and 
his Raphael, his Adam and his Eve. But if 
he became indebted on this occasion to the 
genius of painting, his Muse has most amply 
discharged the obligation to her " dumb sis- 
ter," by giving to Fuseli much more than she 
borrowed from his lineal progenitor in the 
pedigree of genius, Michael Angelo; and in- 
ducing the ideas of that creation, displayed 
in the Milton Gallery, which, constituting 
the pride of the present times, will command 
the admiration of posterity. 

From Rome our traveller continued his 
route to Naples; and, falling into company 
on the road with a certain pilgrim or her- 
mit, as he tells us, was by him, from whom 
such a service could be the least expected, 
introduced to the celebrated Giovanni Bat- 
tista Manso, Marquis of Villa. This accom- 
plished nobleman, who had formerly distin- 
guished himself in the armies of Spain, was 
now at an advanced age established in his 
native city; and, though possessed of great 
wealth high rank and eminent character, de- 



LIFE OF MILTON. 14o 

riving his principal renown from the friend- 
ship of the illustrious Tasso; of whom when 
living he had been the cherisher, and the 
biographer when dead. He now opened his 
arms to Milton, and received with kindness 
a poet still greater than his immortal friend. 
The attentions which he paid to the English 
traveller were of the most flattering nature, 
not only conducting him through the vice- 
roy's palace and to a sight of all that was 
worthy to be shown in the city, but honour- 
ing him also with some familiar and friendly 
visits. The imprudent freedom, with which 
our zealous protestant, unmindful of his 
friend Wotton's counsel, had discovered his 
sentiments on the subject of religion, was 
the only circumstance which deprived him 
of a still more unreserved communication 
with this elegant Maecenas of modern Italy. 
This was intimated to Milton, on his de- 
parture from Naples, by Manso himself, 
who with all his kindnesses on this occasion 
had not satisfied the liberality of his own 
mind, and who was desirous of explaining 
the cause of the imaginary deficiency. He 
had indeed pointed to this offence of reli- 
gion in a Latin distich with which he had 
presented his new guest, and which is cer- 
tainlv more remarkable for the height of its 

L 



146 LITE OF MILTON. 

praise than for the goodness of its verse or 
the justness and the originality f of its thought. 
Generally known as it is, it shall be given 
to our readers, with an apology for the at- 
tempted translation of a pun. 

Ut mens, forma, decor, facies, mos, si pietas sic, 
Non Anglus verum hercle Angelas ipse fores. 

With mind, form, manners, face did faith agree, 
No Angle but an Angel wouldst thou be. 

It has been remarked, and not without 
malignity, that the complimentary offerings 
of the Italian wits to our illustrious traveller 
are not distinguishable for their merit as coin- 
positions. We will not dispute the truth of 
this observation ; or affect to discover much 
beauty in the Latin prose of Dati, or, though 
this be rather of a higher order, in the Ita- 
lian verse of Francini. We will even allow 
that as the praise grows the poetry dwindles; 
and that in this last distich, in which the 
climax of compliment is complete, the Manso 

f The conceit, such as it is, is borrowed from Gregory the 
Archdeacon, who was afterwards raised to the Papal throne., in 
the sixth century. 

"With the advantage of five syllables more than the English 
verse, and of the double meaning of the word, mos, alluding both 
to morals and to manners, the Latin hexameter cannot be ade- 
quately represented by one line of five iambic feet in our language. 
The, ee decor," of the original is wholly omitted,, and the, t( mos," 
only half inserted in my translation : but " brevity," in this in- 
stance, f( is the soul of wit." 



LIFE OF MILTON. 147 

of Naples is inferior to the Salsilli and the 
Selvag-gi of Rome. Bat the intrinsic or the 
relative merit of these short, and perhaps al- 
most extemporaneous effusions is not an 
object of our consideration. They must be 
viewed by us with reference not to their au- 
thors but to their object; and they cannot 
fail to excite our surprise when we consider 
them as the homage of acute men, accus- 
tomed to contemplate and appreciate the 
highest efforts of the human mind, to a young 
traveller, on a short visit from a distant coun- 
try, who was not made illustrious by wealth 
or by connexions, but who extorted these 
bursts of admiration solely by the display of 
talents and erudition. 

It has been observed also that, in the in- 
tercourse* of praise with our author, the Ita- 
lians gained more valuable commodities than 
they gave. If this remark be just, as it in- 
disputably is, with respect to the compli- 
ment of Salsilli, it is still more prominently 
true when referred to that of Manso. The 
Latin poem, in which Milton addresses this 
venerable friend and patron of the Muses, 
is a high and admirable composition, which 
to the praised z friend of Marino and of Tasso, 

s Manso is named by Tasso, in the 20th book of his great 
poem, among the princes of Italy., Tasso has also addressed to 



148 LIFE Or MILTON. 

offers incense, kindled with a more celestial 
flame than any with which he had hitherto 
been propitiated. 

The production is so beautiful that we 
may perhaps be pardoned by our readers if 
we present it to them entire. 

MANSUS. 

Haec quoque, Manse, tuae meditantur carmina laudi 

Pierider,, tibi, Manse, choro notissime Phflebi; 

Quandoquidem ille alium haud aequo est dignatus honore 

Post Galli cineres et Mecaenatis Hetrusci. 

Tu quoque, si nostrae tantum valet aura Camcenae, 

Victrices hederas inter laurosque sedebis. 

Te pridem magno felix concordia Tasso 

Junxit, et aeternis inscripsit nomina chartis : 

Mox tibi dulciloquum non inscia Musa Marinum 

Tradidit; ille tuum dici se gaudet alumnum, 

Dum canit Assyrios divum prolixus amores ; h 

Mollis et Ausonias stupefecit carmine nymphas. 

Ille itidera moriens tibi soli dsbita vates 

Ossa, tibi soli, supremaque vota reliquit : 

Nee manes pietas tua chara fefellit amici: 

Vidimus arridentem operoso ex aere poetam.' 



him five sonnets and his dialogue on Friendship. Manso was 
one of the founders and was also president of the academy of the 
Otiosi at Naples. 

h Milton alludes to the principal poem of Marino, II Adone. 

1 A monument was erected to Marino at Naples by Manso. 
Marino belonged to the academy of the Otiosi, of which Manso, 
as we have mentioned, was the founder. Hence the propriety 
of the epithet ( alumnus/ applied to Marino in his relation t© 
Manso. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 149 

Nee satis hoc visum est in utrumque, et nee pia cessant 
Officia in tumulo; cupis integros rapere Oreo, 
Qua potes, atque avidas Parcarum eludere leges. 
Amboram genus, et varia sub sorte peractam 
Describis vitam, moresque, et dona Minervae : k 
iEmulus illius, Mycalen qui natus ad altami 

k Manso became the biographer of his two friends Tasso and 
Marino. 

1 Mr. Warton's note on this passage is certainly unfortunate, 
and must be inserted as a specimen of his critical and literary abi- 
lity. ' ' Mycalen qui natus ad- altam," &c. — " Plutarch who wrote 
the Life of Homer. He was a native of Bceotia, where Mycale 
is a mountain. It is among these famous hills that blazed at 
Phaeton's conflagration, Ovid. Metam. ii. 223. — The allusion is 
happy; as it draws with It an implicit comparison between Tasso 
and Homer. In the epithet, ' c facundus," there is much elegance 
and propriety. Plutarch' is the great master of ancient bio- 
graphy." [Milton's Juvenile Poems, p. 529. 2d ed ] 

From the two concluding sentences of this curious note, the 
unlearned reader might be led to conclude that s< facundus" was 
the Latin representative of ancient biography j or, (if his dictionary 
should acquaint him with the meaning of this epithet,) that ancient 
biography was a species of composition altogether distinct from 
modern; which his common sense and the experience of his 
English reading would assure him to be in no way inseparably 
and vitally connected with eloquence, or the beauties of com- 
position. But the whole note is peculiarly unlucky. Not a 
word in the two lines of Milton is applicable to Plutarch, and 
every word is applicable to Herodotus. The epithet, " facundus," 
which is admirably appropriate to the latter, cannot without some 
compulsion of its meaning be assigned to the former. Of the two 
lives of Homer, which are extant, it is more probable that the 
Ionic was written by Herodotus than that the Attic was by Plu- 
tarch. Mycale is a mountain not in Bceotia, as Mr.W. affirms, 
but in Ionia near the borders of Caria, the native country of He- 
rodotus. Ovid, whom Mr. Warton quotes on this occasion, is 
no evidence respecting the situation of Mycale. In the cited 
passage his mountains are thrown together without any other re- 



150 LIFE OF MILTON. 

Rettulit iEolii vitam facundus Homeri. 
Ergo ego te, Clids et magni nomine Phoebi, 
Manse pater, jubeo longum salvere per aevum, 
Missus Hyperboreo juvenis peregrinus ab axe. 
Nee tu longinquam bonus aspernabere Musam, 
Quas, nuper gelida vix enutrita sub arcto, 
lmprudens Italas ausa est volitare per urbes. 
Nos ctiam in nostro modulantes flumine cygnos 
Credimus obscuras noctis sensisse per umbras, 
Qua Thamesis late puris argenteus urnis 
Oceani glaucos perfundit gurgite crines: 
Quin et in has quondam pervenit m Tityrus oras. 

Sed neque nos genus incultum, nee inutile Phcebo, 
Qua plaga septeno mundi sulcata Trione 
Brumalem patitur longa sub nocte Booten. 
Nos etiam colimus Phcebum, nos munera Phcebo, 

ference than to that of metre j and Mycale succeeds to the Phry- 
gian Dindymus : 

Dindymaque et Mycale, natusque ad sacra Cithaeron. 

Mycalessus is noticed by * Pliny as a mountain of Boeotia; and this 
circumstance may possibly have induced Mr. Warton's mistake. 

For whatever convincing reasons the Life of Homer imputed to 
Herodotus may now be rejected as spurious, Milton either enter- 
tained no doubts of its authenticity or did not allow them to pre- 
vent him from alluding to the suspected work, in the passage on 
which Mr. Warton has here commented. When I say that the Ionic 
.Life was more probably written by Herodotus than the Attic was 
by Plutarch, I am far from intending to assert the genuineness of 
the former production : for if I could not from my own small fund 
of classical knowledge adduce reasons to lead me to an opposite 
conclusion, I should be withheld from so erroneous an opinion by 
the judgment of more than one of the great scholars of the pre- 
sent day, whom I am proud to rank either among my friends or 
my near connexions. 

m Chaucer, who travelled into Italy, is distinguished in Spen- 
ser's pastorals by the name of Tityrus. 

* L. 4. c. 7. 



LIFE OF MILTOK. 151 

Flaventes spicas et lutea mala canistris 
Halanternque crocum, perhibet nisi vana vetustas, 
Misimus, et lectaa Druidum de gente choreas. 
Gens Druides antiqua, sacris operata deorum, 
Heroum laudes imitandaque gesta canebant. 
Hinc quoties festo cingunt altaria cantu, 
Delo in herbosa, Graiae de more puellae, 
Carminibus laetis memorant Corineida Loxo," 
Fatidicamque Upin cum navicoma Hecaerge, 
Nuda Caledonio variatas pectora fuco. 

Fortunate senex, ergo, quacunque per orbem 
Torquati decus, et nomen celebrabitur ingens, 
Claraque perpetui succrescet fama Marinij 
Tu quoque in ora frequens venies plausumque virorum^ 
Et parili carpes iter immortale volatu. 
Dicetur turn sponte tuos habitasse penates 
Cynthius, et famulas venisse ad limina Musas. 
At non sponte domum tamen idem, et regis adivit 
Rura Pheretiadae, coelo fagitivus Apollo ; ° 
IUe licet magnum Alciden susceperat hospes. 
Tantum ubi clamosos placuit vitare bubulcos, 

n Upis, Loxo, and Hecaerge are the names of the daughters 
of Boreas, who offer presents to Apollo in Callimachus's hymn 
to Delos. 

dtfo %olv%ujv doi^oLa-Tiujv 

Ovitis rs \o%a) T£ xcu euoucuv sKOtegyy) 
©vyccrsgss (oogsoto, 

Tjav si$ AtjKov. 

° The fable of Apollo, driven by Jupiter from heaven and 
compelled to tend the flocks of Admetus king of Thessaly, is 
too well known to require a repetition of it, Mr. Warton has 
observed, before me, that Milton in this passage has imitated a 
beautiful chorus in the Alcestis. I wish however that Milton 
on this occasion, preserving the moderation of Euripides, had 
restricted to the animal creation the effects of Apollo's melodies: 
but perhaps it was not necessary that any limitation of power 
should be prescribed to the lyre of a god. 



152 LITE OF MILTON. 

Nobile mansueti cessit Chironis in antrum, 
Irriguos inter saltus frondosaque tecta 
Peneium prope rivum : ibi saepe sub ilice nigra, 
Ad citharae strepitum, bland a prece victus amici, 
Exilii duros lenibat voce labores. 
Turn neque ripa suo, barathro nee flxa sub imo 
Saxa stetere loco ; nutat Trachinia rupes, 
Nee sentit solitas, immania pondera, silvas; 
Emotaeque suis properant de collibus orni, 
Mulcenturque novo maculosi carmine lynces. 
Diis dilecte senex, te Jupiter sequus oportet 
Nascentem, et raiti lustrarit lumine Phoebus, 
Atlantisque nepos; neque enim, nisi charus ab ortu 
Diis superis, potent magno favisse poetae. 
Hinc longseva tibi lento sub flore senectus 
Vernat, et iEsonios lucratur vivida fusosj 
Nondum deciduos servans tibi frontis honores, 
Ingeniumque vlgens, et adultum mentis acumen. 
O minx si mea sors talem concedat amicum, 
Phceboeos decorasse viros qui tarn bene norit, 
Siquandb indigenas revocabo in carmina reges, 
Arturumque etiam sub terris bella moventem : p 
Aut dicam invictae sociali foedere mensae^ 
Magnanimos heroasj et, (O modo spiritus adsit!) 
Frangam Saxonicas Britonum sub Marte phalanges. 
Tandem ubi non tacitae permensus tempora vitae, 
Annorumque satur, cineri sua jura relinquamj 
Ille mihi lecto madidis astaret ocellisj 
Astanti sat erit si dicam, sim tibi curae. 
Ille meos artus, liventi morte solutos, 
Curaret parva componi molliter urna : 
Forsitan et nostros ducat de marmore vultus, 



p Arthur in the old fables of Britain is supposed to be still 
living in the kingdom of the faeries : whence he is to return at 
the appointed season for the purposes of conquest and dominion. 
* The knights of the round-table. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 153 

Nectens aut Paphia myrti aut Parnasside lauri 
Fronde comas, at ego secura pace quiescam. 
Turn quoque, si qua rides, si prsemia certa bonorum, 
Ipse ego ccelicoKim semotus in aethera divum, 
Quo labor et mens pura vehunt atque ignea virtus, 
Secreti haec aliqua mundi de parte videbo, 
Quantum fata sinunt; et, tota mente serenum 
Ridens, purpureo surTundar lumine vultus, 
Et simul sethereo plaudam mihi laetus Olympo. 



MANSO. 

Once more the Muses to your praise aspire, 

O Manso! dear to the Phoebean quire 5 

Graced by the God, and made his chosen pride 

Since his own Gallus and Maecenas died. 

My Muse would throne you, were her power so great, 

With bays and ivy clu string round yOur state. 

Friendship once mingled your's and Tasso's fame ; 

And stamp' d his deathless pages with your name. 

Marino next, the tender and refined, 

Her child to you the conscious Muse assign'd : 

He own'd you for a father, when his tongue 

The Assyrian Goddess and her lover sung ; 

While on the languid tale the Ausonian maidens hung. 

And your's were too the latest vows he breathed - f 

To you alone his ashes he bequeathed. 

Nor you the manes of your friend deceived: 

The docile brass his pleasing form received. 

Struck we behold him smiling from the grave j 

And feel your pious potency to save. 

Nor thus confined, your hallow'd cares contend 

To snatch entire from death each tuneful friend. 

Proudly with fate successful war to wage, 

You bid them live, immortal in your page: 

Their fortunes, virtues, talents you define, 

Till all the man comes out in your design; 



\ 



154 LIFE OF MILTON. 

Like him whose hand iEolian Homer drew. 

To buried genius sensitively true. 

Hail then! from Clio and your Phoebus hail! 

Crown'd be your locks with wreaths that never fail ! 

Hail, honour' d sire! in homage to your worth 

A youth salutes you from the distant north. 

Nor you this offering of a Muse despise, 

Who, scarcely n.ursed beneath her arctic skies, 

With hasty step has traced the Hesperian shore, 

Your towns, your arts, your manners to explore. 

We too can boast our swans, whose liquid throats 
Cheer the dull darkness with their dulcet notes; 

Where silver Thames, in proud diffusion spread, 
Pours his full flood on ocean's azure head. 

We too can boast that Tityrus of yore, 
To your gay clime the Muse of Britain bore. 
Phoebus avows us, and not rude our strain, 
Though our night pause beneath the stormy wain. 
We too have bow'd to Phoebus, and of old, 
Our blushing orchards and our fields of gold, 
If ancient lore be true, have heap'd his shrine, 
Brought by the frith oro ot the Druid line. 
(The hoary Druid, in harmonious praise, 
Hymn'd the blest Gods, and sung heroic days.) 
Hence, round the festal altar, hand in hand, 
The Grecian maids, on Delos' flowery strand, 
To Loxo, Upis the prophetic fair, 
And Hecaerge with the golden hair, 
Whose painted breasts their British birth betray, 
Swell the glad chorus and exalt the lay. 

Blest Sire ! where'er Torquato's victor Muse 
Her glorious track to fame o'er earth pursues; 
Where'er extends Marino's mild renown, 
Your name and worth and honours shall be known. 
In the same car of triumph as you ride, 
Still shall you share the plaudit and the pride : 
Deck'd with their crowns, in all their pomp of state, 
Shall pass with them through fame's eternal gate. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 155 

Succeeding times shall say, the God of song 
Dwell'd, with his minstrel maids, your train among, 
A willing inmate ; not as once, from heaven , 
By Jove's stern wrath to serve Admetus driven, 
He press' d with haughty step the regal floor, 
Though great Alcides there had trod before. 
Indignant still he watch'd the bleating plains : 
But oft, to shun the rudeness of the swains, 
Tired would he seek mild Chiron's learned cave, 
(Which vines o'erhang, and lucid fountains lave, 
By Peneus' bank,) and there diffusely laid, 
Fann'd by soft breezes in the whispering shade, 
Would sing, indulgent to his friend's desire, 
And cheat his tedious exile with the lyre. 
Then rocks would move, the stream forget to flow; 
Great Pelion's summits with their forests bow; 
Trees, quick with ear, confess the sweet controll; 
And fawning pards submit their savage soul. 

Heaven-loved Old Man! to gild your natal day 
Jove, sure, and Phcebus shot their purest ray, 
With Maia's son ; for no less honour'd birth 
Could suit the soul that grasp' dTorquato's worth. 
Hence years to you the youth of iEson bring : 
Your age is winter, but it buds like spring. 
With its full pride of hair your head is fraught, 
And keen and forceful strikes your manly thought. 
Oh ! might a friend, endow'd like you by heaven, 
To adorn the bard and judge the strain be given, 
Whene'er my Muse shall sound the British strings, 
And wake again to song her native kings; 
Hail her great Arthur who, from mortals far, 
Now pants for his return and burns for war; 
Record the hero-knights who sheathed the sword, 
Lihk'd in strong union round the mighty board; 
And break, (if daring genius fail not here,) 
The Saxon phalanx with the British spear. 
Then when, not abjectly discharged, my trust 
Of life was closed, and dust required its dust, 



156 LIFE OF MILTON. 

Oh might that friend, with dewy eyelids near, 
Catch my last sigh, and tell me I was dear. 
Then my pale limbs, resolved in death's embrace. 
Beneath an humble tomb devoutly place; 
And haply too arrest my fleeting form 
In marble, from the sculptors chisel warm 
And full of soul j while round my temples play 
The Paphian myrtle and Parnassian bay. 
Meantime, composed in consecrated rest, 
I share the eternal sabbath of the blest. 
If faith deceive not, — if the mighty prize 
Be fix'd for ardent virtue in the skies; 
There, where the wing of holy toil aspires, 
Where the just mingle with celestial quires, 
There, as my fates indulge, I may behold 
These pious labours from my world of gold: 
There, while a purple glory veils my face, 
Feel my mind swell to fit her heavenly place: 
And, smiling at my life's successful fight, 
Exult and brighten in etherial light. 1 ' 



r Mr. W. GifFord, the author of the Baviad, whose probity 
of heart and benevolence of manners conciliate as powerfully 
in private life as his poetic and critical talents strike in public, 
was so kind as to read the manuscripts of this translation, and 
of that of the Damon. The alterations which he suggested 
were few, and, excepting in one place in the Damon which shall 
be noticed, only of single words. The reader perhaps may wish 
that these suggestions had been more numerous, and of greater 
comprehension. 

At a period long subsequent to the publication of this work, I 
succeeded in procuring a copy of Mr. J. Sterling's poems, among 
which I was induced, by Mr.Todd and Mr. Hayley, to expect an ex- 
cellent translation of the Mansus. — Mr. Sterling seems to be a man 
of learning and taste; and his little volume contains some pieces 
which may be perused with pleasure by the poetic reader: but his 
translation of the Mansus has disappointed me, and is unquestion- 



LITE OF MILTON. 157 

From a passage in this poem, we may 
discover that the project of some great poetic 

ably a very unsuccessful attempt. As it omits, or only suggests a 
hint of some of the finest passages of the original, it must be pro- 
nounced to be imperfect; and while the whole of it is deficient 
in force, many of its lines are peculiarly weak and distinguished 
from prose only by the rhyme with which they are closed. Some 
of the verses however are good; and it may perhaps be placed, 
with respect to merit, by the side of Dr. Langhorne's translation 
of the Damon, — another composition which is so luckless as to 
experience Mr. Hayley's praise. 

If I had a right to make so free with my readers time, I would 
submit to them the whole of Mr. Sterling's version, that they 
might determine for themselves on its value : but as this must not 
be done, I will content myself with transcribing one of its passages,, 
premising that the following eight verses are to supply the place 
of no less than twenty-one beautiful lines of the original, from 
"■Fortunate senex," to " Mulcenturque novo maculosi carmine 
Jynces." 

" O happy sage, thy name shall ever live: 
Remotest climes the meed of praise shall give; 
Wheree'er Torquato shall be hail'd divine; 
Wheree'er Marino's growing fame shall shine. 
Cinthius himself thy festive board has graced : 
The laurell'd Muses round their God were placed : 
And wit refined, and manly sense were there; 
With bright-eyed fancy, fairest of the fair. 

In a note annexed to his translation, Mr. S. has anticipated 
me in the censure of Mr, Warton's comment on et Mycalen qui 
natus ad altam;" the erroneousness of which is so palpable as to 
be obvious to any reader who has passed the threshold of classical 
literature. Why should Mr. S. falsify the quantity of the penult 
in Mycale, in the following very poor lines ? 

tc Born near sublime Mycale, history's sire, 
Thus paints with eloquence the Homeric lyre." 



158 LIFE OF MILTON. 

work, which Milton had formerly intimated 
to his friend, Deodati, as existing then only 
in distant and indistinct prospect, was now 
brought closer and in a more specific form 
to the poets sight. The expanding con- 
sciousness of his own powers, the commen- 
dations of the Italian literati, and, above all 
perhaps, the conversation and encouraging 
judgment of the friend of Tasso seem now 
to have rendered him more resolute in his 
pursuit of the epic palm and more confident 
of his success. " 1 began thus far" (he tells 
us) " to assent to them," (his Italian intimates,) 
" and divers of my friends at home, and not 
less to an inward prompting, which grew 
daily upon me, that by labour and intent 
study, (which I take to be my portion in this 
life,) joined with the strong propensity of 
nature, I might perhaps leave something so 
written to aftertimes as they should not wil- 
lingly let it die." s 

Although, from the example of the Ita- 
lian poets and from the difficulty of asserting 
a place even in the second class among those 
of Rome, he was now determined to em- 
ploy his native language as the tongue of his 
poetry, he was not yet decided with respect 

s Reasons of C. Govern. P. W. i. 120. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 159 

to its subject or even to its form. " Time 
serves not/' (he says,) " and perhaps I might 
seem too profuse to give any certain account 
of what the mind at home, in the spacious 
circuits of her musing, hath liberty to pro- 
pose to herself, though of highest hope and 
hardest attempting: whether that epic form, 
whereof the two pieces of Homer and those 
other two of Virgil and Tasso are a diffuse, 
and the book of Job a brief model ; or whe- 
ther the rules of Aristotle herein are strictly 
to be kept, or nature to be followed, which 
in them that know art and use judgment 
is no transgression but an enriching of art; 
and lastly, what king or knight before the 
conquest might be chosen, in whom to lay the 
pattern of a Christian hero. And as Tasso 
gave to a prince of Italy his choice, whether 
he would command him to write of Godfrey's 
expedition against the infidels or Belisarius 
against the Goths or Charlemain against 
the Lombards, if to the instinct of nature 
and the imboldning of art aught may be 
trusted, and that there be nothing adverse 
in our clime* or the fate of this age, it haply 
would be no rashness, from an equal dili- 

1 In this and in other passages of his various works,, Milton 
seems to attribute to climate an influence over the human intel- 
lect, which experience has demonstrated not to exist: and on this 



160 LIFE OF MILTON. 

genee and inclination, to present the like 
offer to our own ancient stories." 

The length of time during which his mind 
had entertained this object, with the diffi- 
culty and the reasons which urged him to 
be sanguine though not assured of its accom- 
plishment, is subsequently stated. " The 
thing which I had to say, and those inten- 
tions, which have lived within me ever since 
I could conceive myself any thing worth to 
my country, I return to crave excuse that 
urgent reason hath pluckt from me by an 
abortive and foredated discovery; and the 
accomplishment of them lies not but in a 
power above man's to promise : but that 
none hath by more studious ways endea- 
voured; and with more unwearied spirit that 
none shall — that I dare almost aver of my- 
self, as far as life and free leisure will ex- 
tend/' &c. &c. " Neither do I think it shame 

erroneous opinion Montesquieu, as is generally known, has rested 
a great part of his system. Climate, otherwise than as in its ex- 
tremes it may affect the physical and organic nature of man, evi- 
dently possesses no ascendency over his mental powers. The 
differences of the human intellect, regarded with reference to 
nations, may uniformly be traced to political and moral causes. 
Wherever man is free and happy, — not oppressed by the iniquity 
of government or solicitously straggling for the means of sub- 
sistence, he will always be found to exult in the full energies of 
his mind. 



LIFE OF MILTON. l6l 

to covenant with any knowing reader, that 
for some few years yet I may go on trust 
with him toward the payment of what I am 
now indebted, as being a work not to be 
raised from the heat of youth or the va- 
pours of wine, like that which flows at 
waste from the pen of some vulgar amour- 
ist or the trencher fury of a rhyming para- 
site; nor to be obtained by the invocation 
of dame Memory and her siren daughters; 
but by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit, 
who can enrich with all utterance and know- 
ledge, and sends out his Seraphim with the 
hallowed fire of his altar to touch and purify 
the lips of whom he pleases/' 11 &c. 

We must surely be struck with that noble 
and sublime spirit which pervades these pas- 
sages, and admire that conscious force with 
that devout diffidence which they exhibit. 
It may entertain us also to discover from 
them the very different sensations with which 
Milton and some of our more modern poets 
seem to have contemplated the arduous la- 
bour of constructing an epic poem. But all 
the parties on this occasion may be right 
with reference to their own particular object. 
After intimating the toils by sea and land, 

« Reas. of C. Govern. P. W. i. 123. 
M 



162 LIFE OF MILTON. 

by opposition from earth and heaven which 
his hero was to sustain and finally, by the 
assistance of the fates and of Jupiter, to 
overcome, the poet closes the awful recital 
with this majestic line — 

Tantae molis erat Romanam condcre gentera. 
So great a toil it was to found imperial Rome. 

This w r as spoken of a mighty empire which 
was to extend over the world and to endure 
for a succession of ages: but an Arab camp 
may be planted in one day, and its vestiges 
may be effaced by the wind of the desert in 
another. 

Having completed his intended residence 
at Naples, he addressed himself to the exe- 
cution of the remaining part of his plan of 
travel which extended to Sicily and Greece; 
those regions on which the classic imagina- 
tion loves to dwell, which it invests with un- 
fading green and brightens with perpetual 
sunshine. The fancy of Milton was, no 
doubt, strongly excited by the approach of 
that time when he w r as to tread the vales of 
Enna and of Tempe, the plains on which 
Gelon and Milliades had triumphed* for the 
liberty of Greece over Carthage and Persia, 
the favoured spot where Theocritus had 
charmed the ear with his Doric melodies, 



LIFE OF MILTOX. 163 

or Euripides had drawn tears with his pa- 
thetic scene. But the dream of fancy was 
soon to he interrupted, and duty required a 
privation to which our traveller did not he- 
sitate to submit. As he was preparing for 
his passage to Sicily, he received letters from 
England, acquainting him with the distracted 
state of his country and with the near pros- 
pect, which affrighted it, of a civil war. His 
own account on this occasion is concise and 
impressive. 

" As I was desirous," he says, " to pass 
into Sicily and Greece, the melancholy intelli- 
gence from England of the civil war recalled 
me: for I esteemed it dishonourable for me 
to be lingering abroad, even for the improve- 
ment of my mind, when my fellow citizens 
were contending for their liberty at home."* 

x " In Siciliam quoque et Grasciam trajicere volentem, me 

tristis ex Anglia. belli civilis nuntius revocavit: turpe enim ex- 

istimabam, dum mei cives de libertate dimicarent, ne animi causa, 

otiose peregrinari." 

Def. Sec. P. W. v. 231. 

"When Milton speaks of the civil W3i* as already begun, and 
I mention it as existing only in prospect at the same period, we 
do not give incompatible accounts: he considers the civil war 
as begun by the resistance of the Scots, and I as commencing, 
somewhat later, at the declaration of the English parliament 
for the raising of an army, or at the immediately subsequent 
event of the siege of Hull. The Scots rebellion began in 163/, 
the civil war of Ensrland in- 1642. 



164 LIFE OF MILTON. 

He resolved however to revisit Rome, 
and, though he was cautioned by some 
friendly merchants to avoid that cily where 
the English Jesuits were meditating plans 
against his safety, he persevered in his reso- 
lution and returned to the papal capital. 
Here, according to his previous determina- 
tion, neither timidly concealing nor ostenta- 
tiously flaunting his religious opinions, he 
continued in fearless openness for nearty two 
months; and whenever his religion was at- 
tacked, he scrupled not to defend it with 
spirit, even within the precincts of the sa- 
cerdotal palace. Whatever dangers might 
threaten him in this strong hold of priestly 
domination, (and I can see no reason for 
supposing that there were none,) they were 
averted by a good Providence, and he was 
allowed to repair again in safety to Florence. 

His second vis.t to this city, which the 
kindness of his friends made a species of 
home to him, was of equal duration with his 
first. He stole indeed a few days from it 
to pass them at Lucca, the former residence 
of the Deodati, the family of his respected and 
beloved schoolfellow. When he departed 
from Florence, he crossed the Apennines 
and travelled, through Bologna and Ferrara. 



LIFE OF MILTOIST. l65 

to Venice/ He spent a month in viewing 
the curiosities of this celebrated city, which 
had once grasped the sceptre of Constantine, 
and where national prosperity and individual 
happiness had flourished for some centuries 
under the controll of a rigid but a regulated 
and self-balanced aristocracy. Having pro- 
vided for the safety of the books which he 
had collected in Italy by procuring a place 
for them in a vessel bound for England, he 
pursued his returning course through Verona 
and Milan, over the Pennine Alps and by 
the lake Lemanus, to Geneva. 

The name of this city, associated in his 
mind at a later period with the calumnies 
of his profligate adversary, Morus, induces 

y At the name of Venice every thoughtful and generous 
bosom must heave a sigh of pain and indignation, when the 
spectacle re^4ir^ of her present situation and of its detestable 
cause. When we see .a city, after ages of independence and 
renown, consigned by unfeeling policy to the dead oppression 
of a foreign and rigid yoke, can we do otherwise than curse 
the cruelty of ambition ? — than execrate all the parties who 
were involved in the guilt of the transaction, the power that 
permitted, the robber who seized, and the thief who accepted 
the plunder — France, Buonaparte, and the Emperor? The fate 
of Switzerland is equally to be lamented in its effect and exe- 
crated in its cause : but in this age, more than in any former one^ 
the happiness of man seems to be made the sport and victim of 
individual ambition. 

Since this note was written., Venice has passed again into 
the hands of her first foreign tyrant: and she may be yet reserved 
to be the subject of many melancholy and mortifying revolutions. 



166 LIFE OF MILTON". 

him, in his own relation of his travels, so- 
lemnly to invoke God as the witness of his 
truth when he declares that, residing in a 
country where much license was admitted, 
he had preserved himself pure from stain 
and reproach; perpetually assured that, if 
offences could escape the observation of man, 
they must yet lie exposed under the eye of 
God. z His visit indeed to Italy was induced 
by such motives and occupied with such 
business as to be nearly insusceptible of any 
tainting suspicion. It was undertaken after 
a studious and irreproachable youth, when 
the first effervescence of the blood was eva- 
porated, and for the purpose of continuing 
rather than of interrupting his literary pur- 
suits. During his residence in this polished 
country, his time seems to have been fully 
engaged with viewing its curiosities and 
with the conversation of its learned men. 
His principal delay was in those cities which 
were the most celebrated for their learning, 
their arts, or their antiquities; and, while he 
gave eight months to Rome and Florence, 

z Quae urbs, cum in mentem mihi hinc veniat Mori calum- 
niatoris, facit ut Deum hie rursus testem invocem, me his om- 
nibus in locis, ubi tarn multa licent, ab omni flagitio ac probro 
integrum atqj intactum vixisse, illud perpetub cogitantem, si 
hominum latere ocuios possem, Dei certe non posse. 

Def. Secun. P.W. v. 282. 



LITE OF MILTON. 167 

he allotted only one to the great patroness of 
pleasure, the queen of the Adriatic. 

The charge of profligacy against our Ita- 
lian traveller has long since been dropped: 
but he has been accused, with more speci- 
ousness, of pursuing his route with so much 
3*apidity as to allow himself only to contem- 
plate the spectacle of the country without 
obtaining an acquaintance with the laws or 
the customs, the characters or the manners of 
its inhabitants. The moral view of a country 
cannot certainly be scanned by any eye with 
so much facility as the natural; and none but 
the most prominent lineaments of the former 
can be caught at a glance, even perhaps by 
the most inquisitive and intelligent traveller. 
Let it be recollected however, in the defence of 
Milton upon this occasion, that his previous 
intimacy in his closet with Italy left him little, 
if any thing, to know of that interesting re- 
gion more than what a visit of a few months 
would readily give to him. Familiar with the 
language the authors and the history of the 
country, he wanted only that acquaintance 
with it which his eye alone could obtain, or 
the personal communication of its men of ta- 
lents and learning supply. To these his access 
was immediate and perfect; and the short 
time which he passed beyond the Alps was 



168 LIFE OF MILTON. 

sufficient for him to measure his own strength 
on the most renowned arena of literature in 
Europe, and to receive and to give know- 
ledge in a generous traffic with the first men 
of the age. If his course was rapid and 
brilliant, it was not useless to others or to 
himself* He was a meteor which, gather- 
ing all the luminous particles within the 
sphere of its attraction, absorbed and blended 
them with its own radiant body for the sole 
purpose of diffusing a stronger emanation of 
light. 

The time for which he suspended his 
journey at Geneva, the Rome of Calvinism, 
is not related; and we only know that it was 
sufficiently long for him to contract an inti- 
macy and friendship with two of its most 
eminent theologians, Frederic Spanheim and 
Giovanni Deodati, the uncle of his friend 
Charles. From Geneva he retraced his for- 
mer road through France, and arrived in 
England, after an absence of a year and 
three months, about the time of the King's 

a The advantage, which he is supposed to have gained from 
Galileo's conversation, has already been mentioned; and we, 
with some of his other biographers, have inferred the growth 
and direction which his imagination acquired from the works 
of the great painters of Italy. His intercourse with Manso may 
perhaps be classed with the prime benefits resulting from his 
transalpine visit. 



LIFE OF MILTON. i69 

return from his second expedition against 
Scotland, when his disaffected forces b had 
been obliged by Leslie to retreat. The crisis 
was striking, and the mind of Milton, checked 
as he had been by his patriotism in his pur- 
suit of an interesting object, was undoubtedly 
very powerfully affected by it. 

His public sensations however were for 
a time overpowered by those which resulted 
from the calamity of a private loss. Afflic- 
tion met his first step on British ground, 
and wrung his heart for the death of his be- 
loved friend, Charles Deodati. He had in- 
deed, while abroad, been touched by a ru- 
mour of this melancholy event: but he -was 
now wounded with the fatal certainty; and 
what was formerly softened by distance and 
the engagements of a new scene was at this 
moment made painfully present to him by its 
association with almost every object which 
occurred to his eye. Young Deodati, who 
seems to have merited the place which he 
possessed in Milton's regard, was a native of 
England though of an Italian family, ori- 

b The soldiers, with a just feeling of the cause in which they 
were engaged, refused to fight. The King was heard to say 
" that his army, lie thought, feared not to encounter men or 
devils, and yet he could not make them strike a stroke against 
the Scots." 



170 LITE OF MILTON. 

ginally from Lucca but in its last generation 
established at Geneva. His father, Theo- 
dore, came early in life to England and, 
marrying a lady of good family and fortune, 
settled himself in this country, and practised 
as a physician. The son was bred to the pro- 
fession of his father; and, having attained to 
very eminent proficiency in literature, he was 
now commencing the exercise of his profes- 
sional duties in Cheshire, when his premature 
death disappointed the friendship of Milton 
and the hopes of the world. The immediate 
cause or the precise time of this event, which 
happened when our author was at Florence, 
is no where, as I can find, mentioned. That 
it excited all his sensibilities cannot be doubt- 
ed, since the Latin pastoral, in which, as he 
expresses it, he laments his solitude/ bears, 
deeply stampt upon the gold of poetry, the 
genuine impression of sorrow, and is as ho- 
nourable to his heart as it is to his talents. 

This effusion of strong grief, lowered into 
melancholy and powerful to incline without, 
oppressing the fancy, is entitled to very high 
regard from every reader of taste. It has 

c Nee dum aderat TJiyrsis, pastorem scilicet ilium 
Dulcis amor Musae Thusca retinebat in urbe. 

Ep. Dam. 1. 12. 
d Se suamque solitudinem hoc carmine deplorat. Arg. E. D. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 171 

been censured and lias been defended: but 
the deed in either case will perhaps be 
viewed with indifference b}^ the unprejudiced 
and able critic. " It is written/' as it has 
been superciliously observed, " with the com- 
mon but childish imitation of pastoral life;" e 
and this has been excused " as the fault of 
the poet's age;" and as compensated by some 
passages in the poem, " wandering far beyond 
the bounds of bucolic song." f " Childish imi- 
tation" is every where the proper object of 
censure, or, to speak more accurately, of con- 
tempt: but how the imitation of any mode of 
social life can with justice be thus, generally 
and without reference to the execution, con- 
demned and stigmatised as childish; or how 
a writer can be honestly made the subject of 
contemptuous remark for employing any al- 
lowed and established species of composition 
as the vehicle of his thoughts, is more than I 
can possibly comprehend. The defence of 
pastoral poetry in the abstract would be a 
very easy task: but the digression, which it 
would induce, would lead us too far and de- 
tain us too long from our principal topic. 
For our immediate purpose it will be sufficient 

e See Johnson's Life of Milton. 

f See Wanton's note at the end of the poem, in his edition of 
Milton's Juvenile poetry. 



172 LIFE OF MILTON. 

for us to assert, without the fear of contradic- 
tion, that thevk have been ages of simplicity in 
which the higher members of the social com- 
bination were husbandmen or shepherds, and 
in which ihe manners of rural life have sup- 
plied the imitation of poetry with some of its 
most pleasing subjects. From that exquisite 
composition, the " Song of Solomon/' to the 
Idyllia of Theocritus, or even perhaps to those 
of our contemporary, Gesner, the offspring of 
the pastoral Muse have obtained and gratified 
readers of the most cultivated taste. This 
will form in the present instance a complete 
vindication of Milton; who when he chose to 
embody his sorrow in the form of a pastoral 
to invoke the powers of song that once warbled 
in the fields of Sicilj r , and tp trace the steps of 
Theocritus and of Virgil, could not be aware 
that he was exposing himself to the sneer of 
the critic, and to the charge of childish 
imitation. 

The climate and the manners, if not the 
language of Britain, oppose its being the scene 
of pastoral poetry ; and no person can object 
more strongly than myself to the writer of 
English bucolics, who must either violate 
probability by the introduction of classic 
names and manners, or outrage taste by the 
exhibition of common and coarse nature, 



LIFE OF MILTON. 1?3 

unallied to the pleasing and the picturesque. 
But a writer, who can speak the language of 
the ancients, may certainly invest himself in 
all their rights; and, lawfully taking posses- 
sion of their scenery their manners and their 
poetic truth, may urge with them an indis- 
putable appeal to the imagination. An 
eclogue or idyllium, added to those of the 
Sicilian or the Mantuan bard, w r ould surely 
not be condemned merely because it was 
the production of a modern. Alphesiboeus 
and Daphnis, on their native plains, with 
their native accents and manners, would be 
readily acknowledged by every poetic fancy, 
let their poetic creator be born within the 
arctic circle or under the line; and, retain- 
ing in its full extent their power of pleas- 
ing, they would thus be able to accomplish 
the prime end of poetry, and consequently 
to satisfy the just demand of criticism. To 
brand therefore all pastoral poetry since 
the days of the ancients, because the pas- 
toral Muse cannot, for some local reasons, be 
naturalized in England, argues either great 
rashness or a very imperfect view of the sub- 
ject. Milton stands on the ground of Vir- 
gil and must be absolved or condemned as 
an ancient writer of bucolics. He certainly 
requires no pardon on this occasion for any 



174 LIFE OF MILTON. 

error, induced by the faulty tasle of his age. 
In the age of Augustus or of George, he 
might stand at the bar of criticism with the 
Damon in his hand, and not dread any 
heavier censure, to counterpoise substan- 
tial approbation, than what might be in- 
curred by a few very venial trespasses against 
the prudery of classical expression. The 
structure of his hexameters in this poem is, 
for the most part, of that appropriate kind 
which is called the bucolic as distinguished 
from the epic: s his images and sentiments, 
with exception to those in a very few lines, 
are through the whole of the composition 
strictly pastoral ; and he never wanders so 
far beyond the bounds of bucolic song, or rises 
so high as Virgil in his Silenus, his Pollio, 
or perhaps his Gallus. His scene is deter- 
mined by the names of some places to Bri- 
tain: but it offends us with no incongruous 
or unpleasant images, h and is made, in fact, 

s When I speak of this distinction, I speak on the authority 
of Terentianus Maurus, who says that the proper structure of 
the bucolic verse, observed more by Theocritus than by Virgil, 
is where the first four feet are not linked by a syllable to the 
fifth, as <c Non ; — verum iEgonis; nuper mihi | tradidit JEgonj" 
and not as <( Silvestreni tenui Musam meditaris a.vena.V 

11 One slight incongruity occurs in the 41 st verse of the 
poem; and it is remarked in the note on the translation of that 
passage, p. IS/. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 1?5 

of no consequence to the piece. A shepherd 
may utter his complaints for the loss of his 
friend in any country, if he be not stationed 
under an orange grove where orange groves 
do not exist, or be made to pass the night in 
a field where the rigour of the skies would 
make us feel more for his bodily than for 
his mental distress. The picture, in short, 
in this pastoral is consistent, and neither 
extravagant nor horrid: it will justify there- 
fore the art and the taste of its author, and 
be secure of acquittal before any just and in- 
telligent tribunal. 

I have said so much on the subject of 
this poem, that it may probably gratify my 
readers to have the whole of it laid before 
them. Its beauties indeed will be only in- 
distinctly seen in my translation : but to 
those who are not conversant with the ori- 
ginal, the inadequate copy may not perhaps 
be unacceptable. 

EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. 
Himerides nymphae, (nam vos et Daphnin et HylaiV 
Et plorata diu meministis fata Bionis,) 

1 I am afraid that our poet has been guilty in this place of a 
false quantity. The first syllable of Hylas is unquestionably 
short. 

His adjungit Hylan nautog quo fonte relictum 
Clamassent; ut littus Hyla, Hyla orane sonaret. 

Vikg. Eel. vi. 



176 LIFE OF MILTOX. 

Dicite Sicelicum Thamesina per oppida carmen j 
Quas miser effudit voces, quae murmura Thyrsis, 



Cui non dictus Hylas puer? Id Geor. Hi. 

Ov Tzovw. Apoll. Arg. lib. 1. 

Tou %a,p!erro s f 'TAa, fed fdv tfAoxa/^* (pogevvfos. 

Tiieo. Idyl. xiii. 

This, however, was only a slip of Milton's pen: in his seventh 
elegy the quantity of Hylas is right — 

Thiodamantaeus Naiade raptus Hylas. 

But I have an objection, on the ground of taste, to the opening 
passage of this poem. It presents us with an unwarrantable 
mixture of fable with truth j and brings the fictitious or fabulous 
personages of Daphnis and Hylas into union with Bion, the pas- 
toral poet of Smyrna, whose death was lamented in the elegiac 
strains of Moschus of Syracuse. 

Two rivers of Sicily bore the name of Himera, one of them 
flowing with a northern course into the Tuscan sea, and the 
other, which is the largest, with a southern into the Lybian. 
On the banks of the former of these rivers, near its influx into 
the sea, stood the city of Himera, in the vicinity of which 
Gelon, the king of Syracuse, gained a memorable victory over 
the Carthaginians at the time of the invasion of Greece by 
Xerxes. I am at a loss to discover why Mr. Warton should call 
the Himera (C the famous bucolic river of Theocritus." Not 
one of this sweet poet's scenes are- placed upon this river: it is 
mentioned only twice (if my recollection be at all accurate) in 
the thirty idyllia, which have been ascribed to him j and he 
was a native, as Suidas informs us, according to some accounts, 
of Coos, or, according to others, of Syracuse, a city no other- 
wise connected with the Himera than as it is in Sicily. The 



LIFE OF MILTON* 177 

Et quibus assiduis exercuit antra querelis, 

Fluminaque, fontesque vagos, neraorumque recessusj 

Dura sibi praereptum queritur Damona, neque altam 

Luctibns exemit noctem, loca sola pererrans, 

Et jam bis viridi surgebat culmus arista, 

Et totidem flavas numerabant horrea messes, 

Ex quo summa dies tulerat Damona sub umbras ; 

Nee dum aderat Thyrsis : pastorem scilicet ilium 

Dulcis amor Musae Thusca retinebat in urbe. 

Ast ubi mens expleta doraum, pecorisque relicti 

Cura vocat, simul assueta seditque sub ulmo, 

Turn vero amissum turn denique sentit amicum, 

Ccepit et immensum sic exonerare dolorem. 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. 
Hei mihi! quae terris, quae dicam numina ccelo, 
Postquam te immiti rapuerunt funere, Damon ! 
Siccine nos linquis? tua sic sine nomine virtus 

Ibit, et obscuris numero sociabitur umbris? 
At non ille, animas virga qui dividit aurea, 
Ista velit, dignumque tui te ducat in agmen, 
Ignavumque procul pecus arceat omne silentum. 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. 
Quicquid erit, certe, nisi me lupus ante videbit, 
Indeplorato non comminuere sepulcbro; 
Constabitque tuus tibi honos, longumque vigebit, 
Inter pastores: illi tibi vota secundo 
Solvere post Daphnin, post Daphnin dicere laudes 
Gaudebunt, dum rura Pales, dum Faunus amabit : 
Si quid id est, priscamque fidem coluisse, piumque, 
Palladiasque artes, sociumque habuisse canorum. 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. 
Hsec tibi certa manent, tibi erunt haec praemia, Damon. 

two passages in which this river is named by Theocritus are 
the following: 

'Ipsga, dvT vSoltos p&tfw yakec. Idyll, v. 124. 

xdi ov$ tyvsg avTov aSgyvew 

'IpipeL airs (pvovri itcn^ o%$ij<nv itoroL^olo. Idyl. vii. 74. 

K 



178 LIFE OF MILTON. 

Atmihi quid tandem net modb? quis mihi fidus 
Haerebit lateri comes, ut tu saepe solebas, 
Frigoribns duris, et per loca foeta pruinis, 
Aut rapido sub sole, siti morientibus herbis ? 
Sive opus in magnos fuit eminus ire leones, 
Aut avidos terrere lupos praesepibus altis; 
Quis fando sopire diem, cantuque solebit ? 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. 
Pectora cui credam? quis me lenire docebit 
Mordaces curas ? quis longam fallere noctem 
Dulcibus alloquiis, grato cum sibilat igni 
Molle pyrum, et nucibus strepitat focus, et malus Auster 
Miscet cuncta foris, er desuper intonat ulmo ? 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat agni. 
Aut aestate, dies medio dum vertitur axe, 
Cum Pan aesculea somnum capit abditus umbra, 
Et repetunt sub aquis sibi nota sedilia nymphae, 
Pastoresque latent, stertit sub sepe colonus; 
Quis mihi blanditiasque tuas, quis turn mihi risus, 
Cecropiosque sales referet, cultosque lepores ? 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. 
At jam solus agros, jam pascua solus oberro ; 
Sicubi ramosae densantur vallibus umbrae, 
Hie serum expecto ; supra caput imber et Eurus 
Triste sonant, fractaeque agitata crepuscula silvae. 1 

1 The idea in this line is beautifully conceived and expressed. 
The broken and agitated shadows of the shaking wood are 
placed in strong representation before our eyes; and we are 
reminded not only of our author's " chequered shade," but of a 
fine expansion of the same image in the Task. The reader 
will thank me perhaps for giving him the entire passage. 

How airy and how light the graceful arch, 
Yet awful as the consecrated roof 
Re-echoing pious anthems; while, beneath, 
The chequer'd earth seems restless, as a flood 
Brosh'd by the wind. So sportive is the light, 
Shot through the boughs, it dances as they dance, 



LIFE OF MILTOK. 179 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacate agni. 
Heu, quam culta mihi prius arva procacibus herbis 
Involvuntur, et ipsa situ seges alta fatiscit ! 
Innuba neglecto rnarcescit et uva racemO; 
Nee myrteta juvantj ovium quoque taedet, at illae 
Maerent, inque suum convertunt ora magistrum. 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. 
Tityrus ad corylos vocat, Alphesibceus ad ornos, 
Ad saiices iEgon, ad flumina pulcher Amyntasj 
" Hie gelidi fontes, hie illita gramina musco, 
<c Hie Zephyri, hie placidas interstrepit arbutus undas." 
Ista canunt surdo, frutices ego nactus abibam. 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. 
Mopsus ad haec, nam me redeuntem forte notarat, 
(Et callebat avium m linguas, et sidera Mopsus,,) 
f< Thyrsi, quid hoc?" dixit, " quae te coquit improba bilis? 
" Aut te perdit amor, aut te male fascinat astrum : 
" Saturni grave saepe fhit pastoribus astrum, 
" Intimaque obliquo figit praecordia plumbo." 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. 
Mirantur nymphse, et <( quid te, Thyrsi, futurum est ? 
" Quid tibi vis?" aiuntj " non haec solet esse juventse 
" Nubila frons, oculique truces, vultusque severi ; 
(t Ilia choros, lususque leves, et semper amorem 
" Jure petit: bis ille miser qui serus amavit." 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. 
Venit Hyas, Dryopeque, et filia Baucidis iEgle, 
Docta modos citharaeque sciens, sed perdita fastu; 
Venit Idumanii Chloris vicina fluenti : n 

Shadow and sunshine intermingling quick; 
And dark*ning and enlight'ning, as the leaves 
Play wanton, every moment, every spot. 

Task, Book I. 

m Avium, cannot with any authorised license be contracted 
into a dissyllable. 

n The river Chelmer in Essex is called Idumanium fluentum 
near its influx into Black-water bay, Warton. 



130 LIFE OF MILTON. 

Nil me blanditiae, nil me solantia verba, 

Nil me, si quid adest, movet, aut spes ulla uuiri.° 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam not vacat, agni. 
Hei mihi! quam similes ludunt per prata juvenci, 
Omnes unanimi secum sibi lege sodales ! 
Nee magis hunc alio quisquam secernit amicum 
De grege : sic densi veniunt ad pabula thoes; 
Inque vicem hirsuti paribus junguntur onagri. 
Lex eadem pelagi: deserto in littore Proteus 
Agmina phocarum numerate vilisque volucrum 
Passer habet semper quicum sit, et omnia circum 
Fnrra libens volitet, sero sua tecta revisens; 
Quern si sors letho objecit, seu milvus adunco 
Fata tulit rostro, seu stravit arundine fossor, 
Protinus ille alium socio petit inde volatu. 
Nos durum genus, et diris exercita fatis 
Gens homines, aliena animis, et pectore discors; 
Vix sibi quisque parem de millibus invenit unum: 
Aut s' sors dederit, tandem non aspera votis, 
Ilium inopina dies, qua. non speraveris hora, 
Surripit, aeternum linquens in saecula damnum. 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. 
Heu quis me ignotas traxit vagus error in oras, 
Ire per aereas rupes Alpemque nivosam ! 
Ecquid erat tanti Romam vidisse sepultam, 
(Quamvis ilia foret, qualem dum viseret olim,P 
Tityrus ipse suas et oves et rura reliquit,) 
Ut te tam dulci possem caruisse sodale! 

° Doctor Parr has suggested to me, (and his suggestions on 
subjects of philological disquisition are always of moment) that 
" futurum," without an adjunct, never means future time, but a 
future event; and that Milton in this place is consequently wrong 
in his latinity. 

p The allusion is to the first eclogue of Virgil, in which the 
poet describes himself, under the name of Tityrus, as allured 
from his farm and native Mantua by the beauty and grandeur 
of Rome. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 181 

Possem tot maria alta, tot interponere montes, 
Tot silvas, tot saxa tibi, fluviosque sonantes! 
Ah certe extremum licuisset tangere dextram, 
Et bene composites placide morientis ocellos, 
Et dixisse, " Vale, nostri memor ibis ad astra." 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. 
Quamquam etiam vestri nunquam meminisse pigebit, 
Pastores Thusci, Musis operata juventusj 
Hie Charis, atque Leposj et Thuscus tu quoque Damon, 
Antiqua genus unde petis Lucumonis ab urbe. 
O ego quantus eram, gelidi cum stratus ad x\rni 
Murmura, populeumque nemus qua mollior herba, 
Carpere nunc violas, nunc sum mas carpere myrtos, 
Et potui Lycidae certantem audire Menalcam! 
Ipse etiam ten tare ausus sum; nee, puto, multum 
Displicui; nam sunt et apud me munera vestra, 
Fiscellae, calathique, et cerea vincla cicutae. 
Quin et nostra suas docuerunt nomina fagos 
Et Datis, et Francinus, erant et vocibus ambo^ 
Et studiis noti, Lydorum sanguinis ambo. 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. 
Heec mihi turn laeto dictabat roscida luna, 
Dum solus teneros claudebam cratibus hcedos. 
Ah quoties dixi, cum te cinis ater habebat, 
Nunc canit, aut lepori nunc tendit retia Damon, 
Vimina nunc texir, varios sibi quod sit in usus! 
Et quae turn facili sperabam mente futura 
Arripui voto levis, et praesentia finxi : 
ir Heus bone ! numquid agis? nisi te quid forte retardat, 
" Imus ? et arguta paulum recumbamus in umbra, 
" Aut ad aquas Colni, aut ubi jugera Cassibelauni? r 

i Of Carlo Dati and Antonio Francini, two of our author's 
warm friends and panegyrists at Florence, we have spoken in 
the preceding part of our narrative. The Lydian origin of the 
Tuscans is known to every reader of Horace, without any re- 
ference to more recondite authorities. 

r The Colne is a river of Buckinghamshire which flows near 
H orton, the residence of Milton's father. The town of Coin- 



182 LIFE OF MILTON. 

" Tu mihi percurres medicos, tua gramina, succos, 

<( Helleborumque, humilesque crocos, foliumque hyacinthi, 

<e Quasque habet ista pains herbas, artesque medentum." 

Ah pereant herbae, pereant artesque medentum, 

Gramina; postquam ipsi nil profecere magistro! 

Ipse etiam, nam nescio quid mihi grande sonabat 

Fistula, ab undecima jam lux est altera nocte, 

Et turn forte novis admoram labra cicutisj 

Dissiluere tamen rupta compage, nee ultra 

Ferre graves potuere sonos: dubito quoque ne sioi 

Turgidulus, tamen et referam; vos cedite, silvae. 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. 
Ipse ego Dardanias Rutupina per aequora puppes 5 
Dicam, et Pandrasidos regnum vetus Inogeniae, 
Brennumque Arviragumque duces, priscumque Belinum, 
Et tandem Armoricos Britonum sub lege colonos : 
Turn gravidam Arturo, fatali fraude, Iogernen/ 
Mendaces vultus, assumptaque Gorlois arma, 

brook derives its name from this river, or rather rivulet. By 
Cassibelauni jugera we are to understand, as Mr. Warton in- 
forms me, Verulam, or St. Albans. 

s In the fabulous history of Britain, Brutus, the grandson of 
jEneas, leads a colony of Trojans to this island, which he con- 
quers and civilizes. He had previously married Inogen, the 
daughter of some Grecian king, called Pandrasus. Rutupium 
is Richborough on the coast of Kent. Armorica (or Bretagne) 
in France was conquered and occupied by the Britons, at the 
time, as it is generally supposed, when they were pressed by the 
Saxons. But we have no accounts of this emigration and conquest : 
and many ascribe the first British settlements in Armorica to the 
soldiers who followed Maximus from our Island ; and who, after 
the defeat of their leader by Theodosius, in the 388th year of the 
Christian aera, established themselves in this maritime province of 
Gaul j where their numbers were increased by successive emigra- 
tions of their countrymen at different periods and under the im- 
pulse of various motives. 

1 Uther Pendragon, being changed by the magic of Merlin into 
the likeness of Gorlois, prince of Cornwall, got possession of his 
wife, Iogerne's bed 5 and Arthur was the offspring of the trespass. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 183 

Merlini dolus. O mihi turn si vita supersit, 
Tu procul annosa pendebis, fistula, pinu, 
Multum oblita mihi 5 aut, patriis mutata Camoenis, 
Brittonicum strides : quid enim ? omnia non licet uni, 
Non sperasse uni licet omnia, mi satis ampla 
Merces, et mihi grande decus, (sim ignotus in sevum 
Turn licet, externo penitusque inglorius orbi,) 
Si me flava comas legat Usa, u et potor Alauni, 
Vorticibusque frequens Abra, et nemus omne Treantae, 
Et Thamesis meus ante omnes, et fusca metallis ' 
Tamara, et extremis me discant Orcades undis. 

Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. 
Haec tibi servabam lenta sub cortice lauri, 
Haec, et plura simul : turn quae mihi pocula Mansus, 
(Mansus Chalcidicae non ultima gloria ripae, x ) 
Bina dedit, mirum artis opus, mirandus et ipse, 
Et circum gemino caelaverat argumento: 
In medio, rubri maris unda et odoriferum ver, 
Littora longa Arabum et sudantes balsama silvse: 
Has inter Phoenix, divina avis, unica terris, 

u Usa, according to Camden, is the Ouse in Buckinghamshire, 
Alaunus is probably the Alan in Cornwall. Abra is a name which 
has been given to the Tweed, the Severn, and the Humber. 
With Milton, in this place, it designates perhaps the last of these 
1 ivers, though the proper name, as it is found in Ptolemy, for the 
astuary, which is now called the Humber, is Abus. TheTamar, 
a Cornish river, is discoloured by running through metallic strata. 
Thule, a name which receded with the extension of the Roman 
geography farther to the north and was latterly given to Iceland, is 
here assigned to the Orkneys, the northern extremity of the limits 
proposed by the poet to his fame, as the Tamar forms the southern. 

x Our readers can require no additional information, in this 
place, respecting Manso, the amiable and literary Marquis of 
Villa. A colony of Greeks, partly from Cumas in JEolia and 
partly from Chalcis in Eubrea, settled on the Coasts of Campania, 
where they built Cumae and Neapolis. From this circumstance 
the country of Naples called Chalcidian and, by Virgil, Euboean. 



184 LIFE OF MILTON'. 

Caeruleum fulgens diversicoloribus alis, 
Auroram vitreis surgentem respicit undis. 
Parte alia, polus omnipatens et magnus Olympus: 
Quis putet? hie quoque Amor, pictaeque in nube pharetrae, 
< Arma corusca faces, et spicula tincta pyropo : 
Nee tenues animas, pectusque ignobile vulgi, 
Hincferitj at, circum flammantia lamina torquens, 
Semper in erectum spargit sua tela per orbes 
Impiger, et pronos nunquam collimat ad ictus: 
Hinc mentes ardere sacrae, formaeque deorum. 

Tu quoque in his, nee me fallit spes lubrica, Damon; 
Tu quoque in his certe es, nam quo tua dulcis abiret 
Sanctaque simplicitas, nam quo tua Candida virtus- 1 
Nee te Lethaeo fas quaesivisse sub orco : 
Nee tibi conveniunt lacrymae, nee nebimus ultra ; 
Ite procul, lacrymae; purum colit aethera Damon, 
iEthera purus habet, pluvium pede reppulit arcumj 
Heroumque animas inter, divosque perennes, 
iEthereos haurit latices, et gaudia potat 
Ore sacro. Quin tu, coeli post jura recepta, 
Dexter ades, placidusque fave quicunque vocaris, 
Seu tu noster eris Damon, sive aequior audis 
y Diodotus, quo te divino nomine cuncti 
Ccelicolae norint, silvisque vocabere Damon. 
Quod tibi purpureus pudor, et sine labe juventus 2 
Grata fuit, quod nulla tori libata voluptas, 
En etiam tibi virginei servantur honores : 
Ipse caput nitidum cinctus rutilante corona, 

y For the accommodation of his verse, the poet has in this 
place happily translated the name of his friend Deodati into 
Greek. But Milton was fond of these versions of a name, 
which was so susceptible of translation. In each of the two 
familiar letters to his friend, which are extant, he calls him 
Theodotus. 

z Deodati died unmarried, and, in this respect, resembled 
Mr. King, the Lycidas of Milton's Muse. Some of the thoughts 
in the conclusion of this poem are easily discoverable in the 
Lycidas. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 185 

Lsetaque frondentis gestans umbracula palmse, 
Sternum perages immortales hymenaeosj 
Gantus ubi choreisque furit lyra mista beatis, 
Festa Sionseo baccbantur et Orgia thyrso. 

DAMO N. 

AN EPITAPHIAL ELEGY. a 

Ye Nymphs of Himera, (whose stream along 
i'be notes have floated of your mournful song, 

a Dr. Langhorne, whose elegant and polished, though not very 
powerful Muse has obtained perhaps less regard than she might 
rightfully claim, has translated a part of this pastoral : but I was 
unacquainted with his version till I had completed my own.* 

The fate of Dr. Langhorne, as a poet, has been peculiarly and 
curiously unhappy j for he has been neglected by the public, and 
has experienced attention from Mr. Hayley. The imperfect trans- 
lation in question is one of the least fortunate of its author's poetic 
efforts: but when it is to be prostrated before Mr. Cowper's ver- 
sion of the same poem, it is raised into fictitious consequence by 
Mr. Hayley, and selected for the object of his warm praise. f By 
this praise however, from the admirer and panegyrist of poor 
Percival Stockdale, Dr. Langhorne, if he could be sensible of it, 
would not probably be much gratified, or feel his vanity immo- 
derately inflamed. 

It was remarked by one of the public critics, (in the Monthly 
Review for March I8O9,) that my version * of the, Ite domum im- 
pasti, domino jam non vacat, agni, which may be called the 
burden of the pastoral, was unsuccessful, and injurious to the 
poetry with which it was associated. As I believe the critic's 
judgment in this instance to be right ; and as I am certain that the 
frequent recurrence of the same couplet, however happily formed, 
must produce with its monotonous interruption an effect which 

* Return unfed, my lambs, by fortune crost, 
Your hapless master, now to you is lost, 
f See Cowper's " Translations of Milton's Latin and Italian 
poetry." 



186 LIFE OF MILTON. 

As Daphnis or as Hylas you deplored, 

Or Bion, once the shepherd's tuneful lord;) 

Lend your Sicilian softness to proclaim 

The woes of Thyrsis on the banks of Thame: 

What plaints he murmur'd to the springs and floods. 

How waked the sorrowing echoes of the woods, 

As frantic for his Damon lost, alone 

He roam'd, and taught the sleepless night to groan. 

Twice the green blade had bristled on the plain, 
And twice the golden ear enrich'd the swain, 
Since Damon, by a doom too strict, expired, 
And his pale eye his absent friend required : 
For Thyrsis still his wish'd return delay'd; 
The Muses held him in the Tuscan shade. 
But when, with satiate taste and careful thought, 
His long forgotten home and flock he sought, 
Ah ! then, beneath the accustom'd elm reclined, 
All — all his loss came rushing on his mind. 
Undone and desolate, for transient ease 
He pour'd his swelling heart in strains like these. 

Back to your fold, my lambs, unfed repair: 

My care of you is lost in deeper care. 

is far from good, and which will not in fact allow the lines to 
be recited more than once or twice in the whole poem, I have 
varied my translation of the repeated line, and have thus, by al- 
ways offering the same thought with a change of diction, not only 
made what before fatigued with its cuckoo note subservient to 
the variety of the piece, but have adhered, in my own opinion at 
least, more faithfully to Nature ,• who, when she suggested at in- 
tervals to the mourning shepherd the same melancholy sentiment, 
would not be apt to suggest it, with too much artifice and accu- 
rate recollection for the disorder of grief, in precisely the same 
formal expression. Whether by following on this occasion the 
dictate of my own feeling I have deviated from that of true taste, 
or whether, by taking such a liberty with my author, I have been 
guilty of any actual offence, must be submitted to the decision of 
my readers. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 187 

What powers shall I of earth or heaven invoke,, 
Since Damon fell by their relentless stroke? 
And shalt thou leave us thus? and shall thy worth 
Sleep in a nameless grave with common earth? 
But he, b whose wand the realms of death controlls, 
Forbids thy shade to blend with common souls. 
While these, o'erawed, disperse at his command, 
He leads thee to thy own distinguish'd band. 

To your sad fold, my lambs, return unfed: 

Your shepherd now to all but grief is dead. 
And sure, unless beneath some evil eye, 
That blights me with its glance, my powers should die, 
Thou shalt not slumber on thy timeless bier 
<( Without the meed of one melodious tear." 
Long shall thy name, thy virtues long remain 
In fond memorial with the shepherd train: 
Their festive honours, and their votive lay 
To thee, as to their Daphnis, they shall pay: 
Their Daphnis thou, as long as Pales loves 
The springing meads, or Faunus haunts the groves, 
If aught of power on faith and truth attend, 
Palladian science, and a Muse thy friend. 

Return unfed, my lambs! nor longer stand 

In fond expectance of my tending hand. 
Yes, Damon, thee such recompenses wait. — 
But, ah! what ills hang gloomy o'er my fate! 
Who now, still faithful to my side, will bear 
Keen frosts, or suns that parch the sick'ning air? 
When c boldly, to protect the distant fold, 
We seek the growling savage in his hold, 

b Mercury. 
c In my translation of this passage, I have shown myself de- 
sirous of keeping the lions of the original rather in the back 
ground. In a British scene, they certainly appear to be out of 
their proper place ; though their names may be here introduced 
only to express some dangerous and difficult exploit. My first 
translation of these lines differed from the present; and for 
what I had then written, Mr. Gifford offered to me some verses, 



188 LIFE OF MILTON. 

Who now, as we retrace the long rough way, 
With tale or song will soothe the weary day? 
Return unfed, my lambs! you once were dear: 
But now I slight you for a care more near. 
To whom my bosom shall I now confide? 
At whose soft voice will now my cares subside ? 
Who now will cheat the night with harmless mirth, 
As the nut crackles on the glowing hearth, 
Or the pear hisses; while without — the storm 
Roars through the wood, and ruffles nature's form? 
Home to your fold, my lambs! unfed depart! 
You cannot touch when sorrow wrings the heart 1 
In summer too, at noontide's sultry hour, 
When Pan lies sleeping in his beechen bower j 
When, diving from the day's oppressive heat, 
The panting naiad seeks her crystal seat; 
When every shepherd leaves the silent plain, 
And the green hedge protects the snoring swain; 
Whose playful fancy then shall light the smile? 
Whose attic tongue relieve my languid toil? 
Go, lambs, unfed ! no more my care confest: 
Grief will not bear a partner in my breast. 
Ah! now through meads and vales alone I stray, 
Or linger sad where woods embrown the day; 
As drives the storm, and Eurus o'er my head 
Breaks the loose twilight of the billowy shade. 
Return unfed, my lambs ! a shepherd's care 
You ask in vain from him who feels despair. 

which are too good for me to appropriate to myself or to with- 
hold from my readers. The first of these lines is my own; the 
others are Mr. Gilford's. 

" Who now with me, tried partner of my toil," 

Will brave the chilling sky, and frost-bound soil? 

Or when the sun with fiercer glory reigns, 

And nature faints along the thirsty plains; 

Dauntless, like thee, the prowling lion face; 

And from the fold the gaunt hysena chase? 



LIFE OF MILTON. 18? 

My late trim fields their labour'd culture scorn; 
And idle weeds insult my drooping corn. 
My widow'd vine, in prone dishonour, sees 
Her clusters wither; — not a shrub can please. — 
E'en my sheep tire me: — they with upward eyes 
Gaze at my grief; and seem to feel noy sighs. 

Hence home, my lambs, unfed! the day is done : 
One you had all my care, and now have none. 
My shepherd-friends, by various tastes inclined, 
Direct my steps the sweetest spot to find. 
This likes the hazel, — that the beechen grove: 
One bids me here, — one there for pleasure rove. 
JEgon the willow's pensile shade delights; 
And gay Amyntas to the streams invites: 
" Here are cool fountains: here is mossy grass: 
" Here zephyrs softly whisper as they pass: 
( From this bright spring yon arbute draws her green, 
" The pride and beauty of the sylvan scene." 
Deaf is my woe; — and, while they speak in vain, 
I plunge into the copse, and hide my pain. 

Go, lambs, unfed! no more I mind your weal: 
My own sad doom is all I now can feel. 
Mopsus surprised me in my sullen mood, 
(Mopsus who knew the language of the wood; 
Knew all the stars, could all their junctions spell ) 
And thus, — " What passions in your bosom swell? 
" Speak! flows the poison from disastrous love? 
f( Or falls the mischief star-sent from above: 
" For leaden Saturn, with his chill controil, 
<f Off. has shot blights into the shepherd's soul." 
Return, my lambs! nor hope your wonted food 
From me, now wrapt in sorrow's gloomy mood. 
The vvond'ring nymphs exclaim, — u What, Thyrsis, now? 
<( Those heavy eyelids, and that cloudy brow 
ie Become not youth :— to youth the jocund song, 
" Frolic, and dance, and wanton wiles belong : 
" With these he courts the joys which suit his state: 
" Ah! twice unhappy he, who loves too late!" 



190 LIFE OP MILTON. 

Return, my lambs, unfed! nor here implore 
Your shepherd's care that lives for you no more. 
With Dryope and Hyas, JEgle came, 
A lovely lyrist, but a scornful dame. 
From Chelmer's banks fair Chloris join'd the train. 
But vain their blandishments, — their solace vain. — 
Dead is my hope, and pointless beauty's dart 
To waken torpid pleasure in my heart. 

Return, my lambs, unfed! you hope in vain 
To find attention in the breast of pain. 
How blest, where, none repulsed and none preferr'd, 
One common friendship blends the lowing herd! 
Touch'd by no subtle magnet in the mind, 
Each meets a comrade when he meets his kind. 
Conspiring wolves enjoy this equal love, 
And this the zebra's party-coloured drove: 
This too the tribes of ocean, and the flock 
Which Proteus feeds beneath his vaulted rock. 
The sparrow, fearless vf a lonely slate, 
Has ever for his social wing a mate: 
Whom should the falcon cr the marksman strike, 
He soon repairs his loss, and finds a like. 
Rut we, by fate's severer frown oppress'd, 
With war and sharp repulsion in the breast, 
Can scarcely meet, amid the human throng, 
One kindred soul, or, met, preserve him long. 
When fortune, now determined to be kind, 
Yields the rich gift, and mind is link'd to mind, 
Death mocks the fond possession, bursts the chain, 
And plants the bosom with perennial pain. 
Unheeded and unfed, my lambs, return : 
Your hapless master now can only mourn. 
Alas, what madness tempted me to stray 
Where other suns on distant regions play ? 
To tread aerial paths and Alpine snows, 
Scared by stern nature's terrible repose? 
Ah! could the sepulchre of buried Rome 
Thus urge my frantic foot to spurn my home? 



LIFE OF MILTON. 191 

Though Rome were now, as once in pomp array'd 
She drew the Mantuan from his flock and shade; 
Ah! could she lure me from thy faithful side; 
Lead me where rocks would part us, floods divide; 
Forests and lofty mountains intervene; 
Whole realms extend, and oceans roar between ? 
Ah, wretch ! denied to press thy fainting hand, 
Close thy dim eyes, and catch thy last command; 
To say, " My friend, O think of all our love, 
" And bear it glowing to the realms above." 

Go! go, my lambs! unfed I bid you go: 

Unjust to you as faithful to my woe. 
Yet must I not deplore the hours that flew, *\ 

Ye Tuscan swains, with science and with you: — '» 

Each Grace and Muse is yours, — and yours my Damon too.J 
From ancient Lucca's Tuscan walls he came, 
With you in country, talents, arts the same. 
How happy, lull'd by Arno's warbling stream, 
Hid by his poplars from day's flaring beam, 
When stretch'd along the fragrant moss I lay, 
And cuil'd the violet or pluck'd the bay; 
Or heard, contending for the rural prize, 
Famed Lycid's and Menalcas' melodies. 
I too essay'd to sing: — nor vainly sung: 
This flute, these baskets speak my victor tongue: 
And Datis and Francinus, swains who trace 
Their Tuscan lineage to the Lydian race, 
Dear to the Muses both, with friendly care 
Taught their carved trees my favour'd name to bear. 

Return, my lambs, without your daily due : 

Lost to myself, I now am lost to you. 
Then, as the moonbeam slumber'd on the plain, 
I penn'd my fold, and sung in cheerful strain : 
And oft exclaim'd, unconscious of my doom, 
As your pale ashes moulder : d in the tomb, 
" Now Damon chants his lay: — he now prepares 
" His twisted osiers, or his wiry snares." 
Then would rash fancy on the future seize, 
And hail you present in such words as these : — 



19% LIFE OF MILTON. 

" What loitering here? unless some cause dissuade, 

" Haste and enjoy with me the whispering shade j 

" Or where his course the lucid Colnus bends ; 

" Or where Cassibelan's domain extends. 

" There show what herbs in vale or upland grow; 

" The harebell's ringlet, and the saffron's glow: 

' ' There teach me all the physic of the plains, 

" What healing virtues swell the floret's veins." 

Ah! perish all the healing plants, confest 

Too weak to save the swain who knew them best! 

As late a new-compacted pipe I found, 

It gave beneath my lips a loftier sound : 

Too high indeed the notes, for as it spoke, 

The waxen junctures in the labour broke. 

Smile as you may, — I will not hide from you 

The ambitious strain: — ye woods, awhile adieu! 

Hence! home my lambs, unfed! more powerful cares 
Usurp my thought, and make it wholly theirs. 

High on Rutupium's cliffs, my Muse shall hail 

The first white gleamings of the Dardan sail: 

Shall sing the realms by Inogen controll'd, 

And Brennus, Arvirage, and Belin old: 

Shall sing Armorica, at length subdued 

By British steel in Gallic blood imbrued: 

And Uther in the form of Gorlois led, 

By Merlin's fraud, to Iogerne's bed; 

Whence Arthur sprang. If length of days be mine. 

My shepherd's pipe shall hang on yon old pine 

In long neglect j or, tuned to British strains, 

With British airs shall please my native swains. 

But wherefore so? alas! no human mind 

Can hope for audience all the human kind. 

Enough for me, d — I ask no more renown, 
(Lost to the world, to Britain only known.) 

d He expresses the same generous and patriotic sentiment in 
one of his prose tracts. lc For which cause, and not only for 
that I knew it would be hard to arrive at the second rank 
among the Latins, I applied myself to that resolution, which 



LIFE OF MILTON. 193 

If yellow tressed Usa read my lays; 

Alan and gulfy Humber sound my praise ; 

Trent's sylvan echoes answer to my song ; 

My own dear Thames my warbled notes prolong; 

Ore-tinctured Tamar own me for her bard; 

And Thule, 'mid her utmost flood., regard. 

Hence ! lambs ! nor wait for care I cannot give : 

Ah! now for grief, and grief alone I live. 
These lays, and more like these for thee design'd, 
I wrote and folded in a laurel's rind. 
For thee 1 also kept, of antique mould, 
Two spacious goblets, rough with labour'd gold. 
(Rare was the gift, but yet the giver more, — 
Mansus, the pride of the Chalcidian shore.) 
In bold existence from the workman's hand, 
Two subjects on their fretted surface stand. 
Here by the red-sea coast in length display'd, 
Arabia pants beneath her odorous shade : 
And here the. Phoenix from his spicy throne, 
In heavenly plumage radiant and alone, 



Ariosto followed, against the persuasions of Bembo, to fix all 
the industry and art, I could unite, to the adorning of my native 
tongue; not to make verbal curiosities the end, (that were a 
toilsome vanity,) but to be an interpreter and relater of the best 
and sagest things among mine own citizens throughout this 
island in the mother dialect. That what the greatest and 
choicest wits of Athens, Rome, or modern Italy, and those He- 
brews of old did for their country, I in my proportion, with 
this over and above of being a christian, might do for mine; 
not caring to be once named abroad, though perhaps I could 
attain to that, but content with these British islands as my 
world; whose fortune hath hitherto been, that if the Athe- 
nians, as some say, made their small deeds great and renowned 
by their eloquent writers, England hath had her noble achieve- 
ments made small by the unskilful handling of monks and me- 
chanics." P.W. i. 119. 

O 



194 



LIFE OF MILTON. 



Himself a kind, beholds with flamy sight 
The wave first kindle with the morning light. 
There, on another side, the heavens unfold, 
And great Olympus shines in brighter gold. 
Strange thougii it seem, conspicuous in the scene,, 
The God of love displays his infant mien *. 
Dazzling his arms, his quiver, torch, and bow; 
His brilliant shafts with points of topaz glow. 
"With these he meditates no common wound : 
But proudly throws a fiery glance around ; 
And, scorning vulgar aims, directs on high 
His war against the people of the sky: 
Thence, struck with sacred flame, the etherial race 
Rush to new joys, and heavenly minds embrace. 

With these is Damon now — my hope is sure — 
Yes! with the just, the holy, and the pure 
My Damon dwells: — 'twere impious to surmise 
Virtues like his could rest below the skies. 
Then cease our tears: — from his superior seat, 
He sees the showery arch beneath his feet; 
And, mix'd with heroes and with gods above, 
Quaffs endless draughts of life, and joy, and love. 
But thou, when fix'd on thy empyreal throne, 
When heaven's eternal rights are all thy own, 
O! still attend us from thy starry sphere; 
Still — as we call thee by thy name most dear! 
Diodotus above — but yet our Damon here. 
As thine was roseate purity that fled, 
In youth abstemious, from the nuptial bed, 
Thy virgin triumph heavenly spousals wait :— 
Lo! where it leads along its festal state!— 
A crown of living lustre binds thy brow; 
Thy hand sustains the palm's immortal bough : 
While the full song, the dance, the frantic lyre, 
And Sion's thyrsus, wildly waved, conspire 
To solemnize the rites, and boundless joys inspire. 



I 



I 



LIFE OF MILTON. 195 

One passage in this poem is of peculiar 
importance, as it shows its author to be re- 
solute in his intentions respecting epic com- 
position, and determined to consecrate his 
Muse to the entertainment and the fame 
of his country. Arthur and the heroes of 
British fable were still the favourites of his 
poetic contemplation. But Arthur, having 
been vainly promised the lofty song of Dry- 
den, was reserved for the mortal Muse of 
Blackmore; and a subject was to be chosen 
by Milton which was better adapted to the 
sublime enthusiasm of his soul, and of a far 
more elevated, if not of a more interesting 
nature. The idea, as we have observed, of 
some great epic work was early conceived 
by him., and he cherished it amid the hoarse 
confusion of his subsequent occupations. In 
the turbulent scenes in w^hich he is now im- 
mediately to be engaged we find him la- 
menting that he was violently drawn from 
the bias of his genius to " a manner of writ- 
ing, wherein he knew himself to be inferior 
to himself, led by the genial power of nature 
to another task, and wherein he had the use, 
as he might account, only of his left e hand ;" 
and we hear him complaining that he was 

e Reasons of C. Govern. P. W. i. 119, 



196 LIFE OF MILTON. 

forced " to interrupt the pursuit o£ his hopes; 
and to leave a calm and pleasing solitariness, 
fed with cheerful and confident thoughts, to 
embark on a troubled sea of noises and hoarse 
disputes, from beholding the bright counte- 
nance of truth in the quiet and still air of 
delightful studies." f We see him however, 
under the oppression of all this cheerless and 
foreign matter, indulging in the dear " hope 
of having them" (his poetic studies, and his 
poetic audience) " again in a still time when 
there shall be no chiding." g 

Milton was a student and a poet by the 
strong and almost irresistible impulse of his 
nature: he was a polemic only on the rigid 
requisition of duty, and in violation of all 
his more benign and refined propensities. 
ff Surety," l he says, " to every good and 
peaceable man it must in nature be a hate- 
ful thing to be the displeaser and molester 
of thousands: much better would it like him, 
doubtless, to be the messenger of gladness 
and contentment, which is his chief intended 
business, to all mankind, but that they resist 
and oppose their own true happiness. But 
when God commands to take the trumpet 

f Reas. of Church Gov. P. W. i. 123. 
e Apol. for Smect. P. W. i. 225. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 197 

and blow a dolorous or a jarring blast, it lies 
not in man's will what he shall say or what 
he shall conceal. " h 

Milton plunged into controversy with 
the desperate resolution of a man who is 
" settled and has bent up 

tc Each corporal agent to the terrible feat:" 

but he returns to his own proper inclination 
with the elasticity of a bow on the rupture 
of its string. His descent, if descent it may 
be called, was " with compulsion and la- 
borious flight;" but we behold him, after 
a long immersion in the pool of discord, 
" springing upward like a pyramid of fire;" 
and showing us " that in his proper motion 
he ascends/' 

But have we, after all, any just reason 
to lament this temporary defection of our 
great poet from his more pleasing and con- 
genial studies? I hesitate in my answer; and, 
were I to obey the rigour of my judgment 
rather than to attend to the suggestions of 
my taste, I should be disposed to determine 
that we have not. By the appropriation of 
his powers to controversy, during the high 
noon of his manhood, we have lost, as we 

h Ii. of Church G. P.W. i. 115. 



198 LIFE OF MILTON. 

may be certain, many a rich effusion of 
fancy on which we might have dwelt with 
exquisite delight: but we have gained by it 
the spectacle of a magnificent mind in a new 
course of action, throwing its roaring fulness 
over a strange country, and surprising us with 
the force and the flexibility of the human in- 
tellect. We are presented by it also with 
the affecting exhibition of very extraordi- 
nary magnanimity and self-devotion ; and 
we may perhaps number the political writ- 
ings of Milton, how erroneous soever and 
incompatible with the present system and 
happiness of Britain may be their principles, 
among that mass of incongruous materials 
and events, from the collision and conflict 
of which have arisen the beauty, the har- 
mony, the vigour and the self-balanced inte- 
grity of the English constitution. 

On his arrival in England, preferring the 
busy scene of the capital as better suited to 
his present views than the retirement of his 
father's country seat, he hired lodgings in 
St. Bride's church-yard, and consented to 
receive as his pupils his two nephews, Ed- 
ward and John Philips. By this measure, 
and by his subsequent assent to the impor- 
tunity of some of his most intimate friends 
to allow their sons also the benefit of his 



LIFE OF MILTON* 199 

instruction, he has exposed himself to the 
title of schoolmaster, which his enemies, who 
employed it as a reproach, conceived to be of 
a nature to degrade him. Whether he re- 
ceived money from his pupils cannot now be 
certainly known; but, while the universality 
of the practice and the acknowledged narrow- 
ness of his income might induce the belief 
that he did, that singular disinterestedness, 
stamped on every action of his life, and that 
enthusiastic desire of communicating know- 
ledge, which could induce him when co- 
vered with literary glory to publish an acci- 
dence for the instruction of children, would 
urge us to entertain the contrary opinion, 
and to conclude that he made a gratuitous 
communication of the treasures of his mind. 
This was the report ! in the time of Rich- 
ardson; and a mere feather thrown into this 
scale must infallibly, as I think, give it the 
preponderance. Let us hear what he says 
on the subject of converting his learning 
and talents into the means of pecuniary pro- 
fit, and then let us reject a report, so per- 
fectly in harmony with his sentiments, if we 
can. " Do they think that all these meaner 
and superfluous things come from God, and 

* Rich. Remarks on Milton, &c. p, Ixxi, 



5200 LIFE OF MILTON. 

the divine gift of learning from the den of 
Plutus or the cave of Mammon? Certainly 
never any clear spirit, nursed up in brighter 
influences, with a soul enlarged to the di- 
mensions of spacious art and high know- 
ledge, ever entered there but with scorn, 
and thought it ever foul disdain to make pelf 
or ambition the reward of his studies; it be- 
ing the greatest honour, the greatest fruit 
and proficiency of learned studies to despise 
these things/' k 

Let this point however be determined at 
the reader's pleasure. Milton in his little 
circle of scholars was usefully, if not splen- 
didly engaged ; and he could not perhaps 
conceive, while he was essentially promoting 
the highest interests of some of his species, 
that he was degrading himself in the estima- 
tion of the rest. In his conduct to his pupils, 
as we are informed by Aubrey, severity was 
happily blended with kindness: he was fa- 
miliar and free where he could be; distant, 
and rigid where he was compelled to be. His 
plan of instruction was formed on a peculiar, 
and, in my judgment, an erroneous principle. 
It respected things more than words, and 
attempted to communicate knowledge when 

k Animad. upon the Remons. Def. P. W. i. ]p-l. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 201 

the understanding was perhaps incapable of 
receiving more than the key which opened 
the important gate. 

Many able men, offended at the number 
of years devoted by our public schools to 
the attainment of language, have indulged 
in some similar speculations, and have en- 
deavoured to crowd the immature and grow- 
ing mind with a variety of intellectual food, 
adapted to oppress rather than to nourish it. 
But the success of these philanthropic pro- 
jectors has been very partial, and calculated 
on the whole to attest the wisdom of our 
established system ; which, instilling into the 
boy the first principles of religion and, with 
them, the sanctions and the objects of moral 
duty, contents itself with cultivating the at- 
tention and the taste of its pupil, and with 
giving him the means of access to the know- 
ledge of his riper years. 

But Milton's benevolence was always 
restless in the pursuit of innovation as it 
tended to improvement; and, like Caesar in 
the field, he never thought any thing done 
while any thing more in his opinion re- 
mained to be done. Not content with the 
common school authors, he placed in the 
hands of boys from ten to fifteen years of 
age such writers as, not remarkable for the 



202 LIFE OF MILTON. 

beauty or the purity of their diction, were 
capable of giving information in some of the 
departments of science. The books selected 
for this purpose from the Roman authors 
were, according to Philips, the agricultural 
works of Cato, Columella, Varro, and Palla- 
dius; the medical treatise of Cornelius Cel- 
sus, Pliny's natural history, Vitruvius's ar- 
chitecture, Frontinus's stratagems, and the 
philosophical poems of Lucretius and Mani- 
lius: from the Greek, Hesiod, Aratus, Diony- 
sius's Periegesis, Oppian'sCynegetics and Ha- 
lieutics, Apollonius Rhodius,Quintus Calaber, 
some of Plutarch's philosophical works, Ge- 
minus's astronomy, the Cyropaedia and Ana- 
basis of Xenophon, Polyaenus's stratagems, 
and iElian's tactics. 

Admitting for a moment the propriety of 
Milton's system of instruction and the so- 
lidity of its foundation, we may reasonably 
doubt whether rnanj^ of these authors were 
calculated to promote it. Vitruvius may be 
read with instruction on the subject of archi- 
tecture: but, while the Roman agricultural 
writers impart no useful information to the 
natives of Britain, the Roman philosophi- 
cal poets, (if Manilius — the perplexed, the 
prosaic, the astrological Manilius can be 
called either a philosopher or a poet,) com- 



LIFE OF MILTON. 203 

municate nothing but what is bad. If Lu- 
eretius's philosophy were not redeemed with 
the wealth of his poetry, it would not now 
attract a vagrant eye; and would proba- 
bly have been whelmed under the worst 
rubbish of antiquity. The selection from 
the Greek is preferable to that from the 
Latin writers. The Muses of Ascra and 
of Rhodes are certainly respectable; and 
they present to us the stamp of the most 
simple and the most refined age of Grecian 
poetry. But they are to be regarded only 
as poets; for Apollonius assumes nothing 
more than to be the framer of a poetic fable, 
and the oeconomy of the husbandry of He- 
siod will not entitle him to the honourable 
rank of an instructor in our country or in 
the present age. Plutarch oifers to us infor- 
mation and strong sense in an unstudied 
dress; and the two works of Xenophon are 
admirable productions, well known in the 
higher classes of our public schools, intel- 
ligible and instructive to the boy and de- 
lightful to the man. Oppian, Quintus Ca- 
laber, Geminus, Polyaenus and JElian may 
be dismissed, with Celsus Pliny and Fron- 
tinus, as possessing various degrees of me- 
rit and as objects of literary curiosity, but 



204 LIFE OF MILTON. 

as qualified neither to give the young scholar 
any useful information nor to form his taste. 
Proceeding with this ambitious, if not 
novel design of infusing extraordinary know- 
ledge into the youthful mind, Milton has been 
expected to produce more than human abili- 
ties have the power to command ; and has been 
insulted fornot sending from his little academy 
orators and poets, philosophers and divines.* 
No master can make scholars against the in- 
hibition of nature ; and solitary learning cannot 
snatch the palm of literary renown or compel 
the gaze of the world. " Virum volitare per 
ora" — to soar to the heights of fame is the 
privilege of the highly favoured few; and if we 
compare the small proportion of these to the 
multitude of the undistinguished even among 
the most cultivated of the human race, if we 
reflect on the hundreds and the thousands 

k " If his pupils/' says the candid Philips, u had received his 
documents with the same acuteness of wit and apprehension, 
the same industry, alacrity, and thirst after knowledge as the 
instructor was indued with, what prodigies of wit and learning 
might they have proved." Life of Milton, xix. 

Johnson talks with the true feeling, and in the proper style of 
a schoolmaster. (C Every man, that has ever undertaken to in- 
struct others, can tell what slow advances he has been able to 
make j and how much patience it requires to recall vagrant atten- 
tion, to stimulate sluggish indifference, and to rectify absurd mis- 
apprehension." Life of Milton. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 205 

who in a short revolution of time pass 
through our public schools to obscurity, we 
shall cease to be surprised that not one of 
Milton's small knot of pupils has asserted 
any very eminent place among the scholars 
or the writers of his country. We shall ra- 
ther indeed wonder that two of them, (the 
Philips's,) were authors and of no despicable 
rank ; the youngest having published a Latin 
answer to an anonymous attack 1 on his uncle 
and his cause, and the eldest, besides that 
life to which all the biographers of Milton 
are so greatly indebted, a respectable Eng- 
lish work with the Latin title of Theatrum 
Poetarum, containing a list and character of 
the ancient and the modern poets. In ho- 
nour of Milton's earnest and intelligent dis- 
charge of his duties as a teacher, it is re- 
corded that these two young men, who 
came under his care at the early ages of 
ten and nine, were so rapidly forwarded in 
their studies as in the course of one year 
to be " able to understand a Latin author 
at sight." Aubrey, who relates the circum- 
stance, ought to have been more specific 
in his account. If he means by " a Latin 

1 Ascribed, but beyond question unjustly, to the pen of 
Dr. Bramhall, bishop of Deny, and afterwards archbishop of 1 
Armagh. 



206 LIFE OF MILTON. 

author/' any Latin author, the fact is cer- 
tainly extraordinary, and reputable in nearly 
an equal degree to the master and the 
scholars. 

But Milton's scheme extended beyond 
the Roman and the Greek, to the Hebrew 
with its dialects of Chaldee and Syriac, and 
to some of the modern languages. It com- 
prehended also a certain acquaintance with 
the mathematics, and with their sublime 
application to the purposes of astronomy. 
While this various reading fully occupied 
six days of the week, the seventh had its 
appropriate and characteristic employment. 
On this day the pupils, after reading to 
their master a chapter in the Greek testa- 
ment and hearing his explanation of it, 
wrote, as he dictated, on some subject of 
theology. 

As his plan of education could not be 
properly executed in his confined lodg- 
ings in St. Bride's church-yard, he soon re- 
moved to a house in Aldersgate-street, of 
which the size admitted his scholars into 
his family, and the situation, secluded by 
a court from the street and opening into a 
garden," 1 supplied the retirement and quiet 

m It was one of those houses, which were called Garden- 
houses, of which in that day there were many; and particularly 



LIFE OF MILTON. 207 

favourable to literary attention. Here he 
gave the example to his } r oung students of 
close application with abstinent diet; and 
the only peculiar indulgence, which he al- 
lowed himself, was that of a day of tem- 
perate festivity once in three weeks or a 
month. This da}% which his nephew, adopt- 
ing his uncle's college expression, calls " a 
gaudy day," n was allotted to the society 
of some young and gay friends. Of these, 
Philips names Mr. Alphry and Mr. Millar, 
and remarks that " they were the beaux of 
those times; but that they were nothing near 
so bad as those now a days/' The gay men 
of the puritan age were indeed mere babies 
in excess to the revellers of the succeed- 
ing one; when the profligacy of a shame- 
less court, propagated rapidly and strongly 
through the country, had nearly driven mo- 
desty and temperance from Britain. 

Abstinence in diet was one of Milton's 
favourite virtues; which he practised inva- 
riably through life, and availed himself of 
every opportunity to recommend in his writ- 
ings. In his second beautiful elegy to his 

in the northern suburbs. Our author's house in Petty France 
was a garden-house. 

n Philips's Life of Milton, xxi. — A gaudy day at Cambridge is 
<a day on which the commons are increased. 



208 LIFE OF MILTON. 

friend, Deodati, he admits of the use of wine 
and good cheer to the lyric and the elegiac 
poet; but to the lofty and ambitious epic, 
who requires the higher and more continued 
exertion of the more comprehensive intel- 
lect, he will allow only the diet of Pythago- 
ras. I will give the whole passage to which 
I refer; and I persuade myself that the reader 
will not regard it as too long in consequence 
not only of its own beauty, but of that of 
the translation with which the kindness of 
my friend, the Rev. Francis Wrangham, has 
enabled me to accompany it; a translation, 
which unites the rare qualities of fidelity and 
elegance, of concise yet ornamented diction. 

Quid quereris refugam vino dapibusq; poesin? 

Carmen amat Bacchum,, carmina Bacchus arnat. 
Nee puduit Phcebum virides gestasse corymbos, 

Atq; hederam lauro prseposuisse suae. 
Saepius Aoniis clamavit collibus, Euoe ! 

Mista Thyoneo turba novena choro. 
Naso Corallaeis mala carmina misit ab agris : 

Non illic epulae., non sata vitis erat. 
Quid nisi vina, rosasq; racemiferumqj Lyaeum, 

Cantavit brevibus Tei'a Musa modis ? 
Pindaricosqj inflat numeros Teumesius Euan ; 

Et redolet sumptum pagina quasq; merum; 
Dum gravis everso currus crepat axe supinus ; 

Et volat Eleo pulvere fuscus eques. 
Quadrimoq; madens lyricen Romanus Iaccho, 

Dulce canit Glyceram, flavicomamq; Chloen, 
Jam quoq; lauta tibi generoso mensa paratu 

Mentis alit vires, ingeniumq: fovet, 



LIFE OF MILTON. 20$ 

Massica foecundam despumant pocula venam, 

Fundis et ex ipso condita metra cado. 
Addimus his artes, fasumque per intima Phoebum 

Cordaj favent uni Bacchus, Apollo, Ceres. 
Scilicet haud mirum, tam dulcia carmina per te, 

Nuraine composite, tres peperisse Deos. 
Nunc quoque Thressa tibi coslato barbitos auro 

Insonat arguta molliter icta raanu : 
Auditurque chelys suspensa tapetia circum, 

Virgineos tremula quae regat arte pedes. 
Ilia tuas saltern teneant spectacula Musas, 

Et revocent, quantum crapula pellit iners. 
Crede mihi'dum psallit ebur, comitataque plectrum 

Implet odoratos festa chorea tholos, 
Percipies taciturn per pectora serpere Phoebum, 

Quale repentinus permeat ossa calor; 
Perque puellares oculos, digitumque sonantern, 

Irruet in totos lapsa Thalia sinus. 
Namque elegia levis multorum cura Deorum est; 

Et vocat ad numeros quemlibet ilia suos. 
Liber adest elegis, Eratoque Ceresque Venusque 

Et cum purpurea matre tenellus Amor. 
Talibus inde licent convivia larga poetis, 

Saepius et veteri commaduisse mero. 
At qui bella refert, et adulto sub Jove caelum, 

Heroasque pios, semideosque duces; 
Et nunc sancta canit superum consulta deorumj 

Nunc latrata fero regna profunda cane; 
Ille quidem paice, Samii pro more magistri, 

Vivat, et innocuos praebeat herba cibos : 
Stet prope fagineo pellucida lympha catillo, 

Sobriaque e puro pocula fonte bibat. 
Additur huic scelerisque vacans et casta juventus, 

Et rigidi mores, et sine labe manus. 
Qualis veste nitens sacra et lustralibus undis, 

Surgis, ad infensos augur iture Deos. 
Hoc ritu vixisse ferunt post rapta sagacem 

Lumina Tiresian, Ogygiumque Linon ; 
p 



£10 LITE OF MILTON. 

Et lare devoto profugum Calchanta, senemque 

Orpheon, edomitis sola per antra feris. 
Sic dapis exiguus, sic rivi potor Homerus 

Dulichium vexit per freta longa virumj 
Et per monstrificam Perseiae Phoebados aulamj 

Et vada fcemineis insidiosa sonis ; 
Perque tuas, rex ime, domos, ubi sanguine nigro 

Dicitur umbrarum detinuisse greges. 
Diis etenim sacer est vates, divumque sacerdos; 

Spirat et occultum pectus et ora Jovem. 



Then why of wine's enfeebling cup complain? 
Beloved of verse, young Bacchus loves the strain. 
Placed in fond preference o'er his laurel bough, 
Oft has the ivy clasp'd Apollo's brow; 
And oft Aonia's hills have heard the Nine 
With frantic shouts the madd'ning orgies join. 
Weak was the lay from Tomi's vineless coast, 
When Naso wept his feasts and friendships lost. 
The flowing bowl with many a rose o'erhung, 
In fancy's sprightliest lay Anacreon sung. 
The Theban god inspires his Pindar's line ; 
And each bright hymn is redolent of wine : 



° Milton and Virgil disagree on the subject of Orpheus's 
age. 

Spretb Ciconum quo munere matres 

Inter sacra Deum, nocturnique orgia Bacchi 
Decerptum latosjuvenem sparsere per agros. 

Georg. lib. iv. 522. 

But each poet had a view perhaps in this instance, to his own 
particular purpose. Milton wished to insinuate that his diet 
had a tendency to promote longevity j and Virgil was aware 
that he could not with any probability make the women of 
Thrace so outrageous with an old man for his neglect of them 
as to tear him to pieces. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 211 

Whether o'erwhelm'd the groaning axle lie, 
Or dark with Eliac dust the impetuous courser fly. 
<f Hot with the Tuscan grape," his bright-hair'd maid 
The Roman lyrist sang beneath the shade. 
Nay thou, whose thankless strain the boon disowns, 
Qwest to the vine that strain's harmonious tones : 
Bright as from casks where Massic juices glow, 
And strong and pure thy sparkling stanzas flow. 
Thine are the arts, in thee with Delphi's God 
Bacchus and Ceres fix their loved abode: 
Hence triply fed, thy dulcet accents roll, 
Which melt and swell by turns the ravish'd soul. 
And now, light sweeping o'er the golden wire, 
The thrilling touch awakes the Orphean lyre; 
Now round the dome the tabret's echoes play, 
That teach the virgin's foot its mazy way. 
These gorgeous shows the Muse may well detain, 
When wine's strong fumes would chase her from the brain. 
Trust me, when Music strikes her festive string, 
And Dance, accordant, weaves the frolic ring; 
Stealthy and soft, as warmth's pervading glow, 
Through all thy veins the inspiring God will flowj 
And from the finger snapt and beaming eye, 
Thalia's self infuse the tuneful sigh. 
For many a God o'er elegy presides, 
Its spirit kindles, and its numbers guides. 
There Bacchus, Ceres, Erato are seen, 
And, with her beauteous boy, the Idalian queen: 
And thence the chiefs of elegiac song 
Drain the full bowl, and join the jocund throng. 
But he, whose verse records the battle's roar, 
And heroes feats, and demigods of yore 5 
The Olympic senate with their bearded king; 
Or howls, that loud through Pluto's dungeons ring; 
With simpler stores must spread his Samian board, 
And browse well-pleased the vegetable hoard: 
Close at his side the beechen cup be placed; 
His thirst by Nature's limpid beverage chased ; 



212 LIFE OF MILTON. 

And p still to vice unknown, unchanged by art, 
His be the guiltless hand, the guileless heart j 
Pure as, with lustral stream and snowy vest, 
The priests of Jove his lifted bolt arrest. 
'Twas thus the sightless seer Tiresias fared ; 
And Linus thus his frugal meal prepared: 
Such the repasts prophetic Calchas knew; 
And he, whose lyre the list'ning tigers drew. 
On food like this immortal Homer fed, 
Whose Muse from Troy the ten years' wanderer led ; 
Safely through Circe's wizard halls convey'd, 
Safely through seas where wily Sirens play'd, 
Safely through deaths dark waste, and dreariest hell, 
Where thronging phantoms linger'd at his spell. 
For shielding Gods the bard, their priest, surround, 
Jove swells his breast, his accents Jove resound.^ 

p (i I was confirmed in the opinion that he, who would not be 
frustrated of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, 
ought himself to be a true poem, that is, a composition and 
pattern of the best and honourablest things, not presuming to 
sing the high praises of heroic men or famous cities, unless he 
has in himself the experience and the practice of all that is 
praise- worthy." Apol. for Smect. — P. W. i. 224. 

<i As the reader may be desirous of seeing the whole of this 
pleasing elegy, I subjoin in this place the first and the last 
twelve lines, which, not being immediately to my purpose, I 
omitted in the body of the work. The translation is by Mr. 
Wrangham. 

AD CAROLUM DEODATUM RURI 
COMMORANTEM. 

Mitto tibi sanam, non pleno ventre, salutem; 

Qua tu distento forte carere potes. 
At tua quid nostram prolectat Musa camoenam. 

Nee sinit optatas posse sequi tenebras? 
Carmine scire velis quam te redamemque, colamque? 



LIFE OF MILTON. 213 

While Milton's occupation, as a teacher, 

Crede mihi vix hoc carmine scire queas. 
Nam neque noster amor modulis includitur arctis, 

Nee venit ad claudos integer ipse pedes. 
Quam bene solennes epulas, hilaremque decembrem, 

Festaque coelifagam quae coluere Deum : 
Deliciasqne refers, hiberni gaudia ruris, 

Haustaque per lepidos Gallica musta focos ? 

Light and unfever'd with excess,, I send 

Health, haply wanted, to my feasting friend. 

But why with song provoke my lingering lay, 

And drag the unwilling scribbler into day? 

Would' st thou from verse my ardent friendship know? 

'Tis not in verse a flame so pure to show. 

Ah ! not to scanted strains, and halting song, 

The powers to grasp my perfect love belong. 

The Christmas glee, December's mirthful board ; 

And fabled Saturn's revelry restored: 

The circling glass, the winter's joyous blaze, 

How passing well thy jovial muse displays! 

Then why of wine's, &c! 

At tu siquid agam scitabere, (si modo saltern 

Esse putas tanti noscere siquid agam,) 
Paciferum canimus ccelesti semine regem, 

Faustaque sacratis saecula pacta librisj 
Vagitumque Dei, et stabulantem paupere tecto 

Qui suprema suo cum patre regna colit j 
Stelliparumque polum, modulantesque aethere turmas, 

Et subito elisos ad sua fana Deos. 
Dona quidem dedimus Christ! natalibus ilia, 

Ilia sub auroram lux mihi prima tulit. 
Te quoque pressa manent patriis meditata cicutis, 

Tu mihi, cui recitem, judicis instar eris. 

But thou, should interest, kind or curious, bend^ 
Anxious to ask what toils employ thy friend 3 



214 LITE OF MILTON. 

preserved his familiarity with many of the 
Roman and Greek authors, and was conse- 
quently not without its use to hiin, it was 
not permitted to interfere with what he con- 
ceived to be his duties as a citizen, and with 
that patriotic object which had recalled him 
from the shores of Sicily and Greece. De- 
termined, from his first acquaintance with the 
struggles of his country, to devote himself to 
her service, he did not hesitate with respect 

Know that the Son of heavens eternal King, 

By holy sages sung, he dares to sing ; 

All meanly wrapt in the rude manger laid, 

The infant-Godhead, and his mother-maid: 

Harping in solemn quire, the cherubs helmd, 

And new born stars, and fanes with their dumb idols 

whelm'd. 
A solemn tribute on his natal day, 
Or ere the point of dawn I framed the lay. 
And thee, my friend, awaits the English strain : 
Thy critic ear shall judge, nor I recite in vain. 

The reader need not be informed that, in these lines, Mil- 
ton alludes to his ode on Christ's nativity. The expressions, 
in italics, are borrowed from this ode. 

This excellent translation Mr. Hayley has prudently omitted 
to notice when he published Mr. Cowper's version of the same 
elegy. Mr. H. was aware, no doubt, that any comparison of the 
two productions would not be in favour of his friend's, and there- 
fore, with more judgment than candour he suppressed all re-, 
ference to the superior composition. 

Of Mr. Cowper's translations, which have lately been pub- 
lished, that of Francini's Italian Ode is unquestionably the best. 
With respect to the rest, it cannot with truth be said that any of 
them rise above mediocrity. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 215 

to the part in which he was to act. Con- 
scious of his own proper strength, and sen- 
sible that genius armed with knowledge was 
a power of far greater and more extensive 
efficiency than the bodily force of any in- 
dividual, he decided in favour of the pen 
against the sword; and stationed himself in 
the closet, where he was himself an host, ra- 
ther than in the field, where every muscular 
private man would be his superior. This 
is substantially the account which we have 
from himself; and the motives of his conduct 
must obtain our approbation as honourable 
and wise/ 

The Long Parliament was now assembled 
as the representative of a nation, irritated 
and alarmed by very flagrant abuses of power 

r " Atque illi quidem, Deo perinde confisi,, servitutem ho- 
nestissimis arrais pepulere : cujus laudis etsi nullam partem 
mihi vindico, a reprehensione tamen vel timiditatis vel ignaviae, 
siqua infertur, facile me tueor. Neque enim militiae labores et 
pericula sic defugi, ut non alia ratione et operam multo uti- 
liorem nee minore cum periculo meis civibus navarim, et ani- 
mum dubiis in rebus neque demissum unquanr, neque ullius 
invidiae vel etiam mortis plus aequo metuentem preestiterim. 
Nam cum ab adolescentulo humanioribus essem studiis ut qui 
maxime deditus,, et ingenio semper quam corpore validior, post- 
habita castrensi opera, qua me gregarius quilibet robustior 
facile superasset, ad ea me contuli quibus plus potui ; ut parte 
mei meliore ac potiore, si saperem^ non deteriore, ad rationes 
patriae,, causamque hanc praestantissimam quantum maxime pos- 
sem momentum accederem," 



216 LIFE OF MILTON. 

in the civil and in the ecclesiastical depart- 
ment. The king's violent conduct to his four 
former parliaments, with his unrelenting im- 
prisonment of their members, one of s whom 
had died under the length and rigours of the 
confinement; his violent attempts to govern 
by prerogative alone; his arbitrary exactions 
in violation of all law, and the severe sen- 
tences, w T ith which his council and his courts 
abetted and enforced his injudicious despo- 
tism, had alienated all the orders of the com- 



" Relying on the assistance of God, they indeed repelled 
servitude with the most justifiable war ; and though I claim no 
share of their peculiar praise, I can easily defend myself against 
the charge, (if any charge of that nature should be brought 
against me,) of timidity or of indolence. For I did not for any 
other reason decline the toils and the dangers of war than that 
I might in another way, with much more efficacy and with 
not less danger to myself, render assistance to my countrymen, 
and discover a mind neither shrinking from adverse fortune, 
nor actuated by any improper fear of calumny or of death. 
Since from my childhood I had been devoted to the more libe- 
ral studies and was always more powerful in my intellect than 
in my body, avoiding the labours of the camp, in which any 
robust common soldier might easily have surpassed me, I betook 
myself to those weapons which I could wield with the most 
effects ana * I conceived that I was acting wisely when I thus 
brought my better and more valuable faculties, those which 
constituted my principal strength and consequence, to the assist* 
ance of my country and her most honourable cause," Def. 
Sec. P. W. v. 199. 

s A very accurate and circumstantial history of England, by 
various authors, (a second edition of which was published in tm&$ 



LIFE OF MILTON. 217 

munity, and had made them ripe for resist- 
ance and innovation. The despotism of the 
leaders of the church party had walked side 

vols, folio in 1719) says on this subject, "They" (the arrested 
members, when brought for trial into the court of King's Bench) 
" refused to submit to any thing but the necessity of a long im- 
prisonment, where some of them died in custody j and others trea- 
sured up a reputation of confessors for the privileges of parlia- 
ment; and in lf340 had an ample reward of thanks and money." 
[iii. 53.] 

As the reign of Charles the First in this variorum history is 
written by a zealous royalist, who is as minute and correct in his 
statement of facts as he is weak and prejudiced in his remarks on 
them, I might in this instance safely follow him, and assert on 
his authority that more than one of the leading parliamentary 
oppositionists at the time in question, on the dissolution of the 
third parliament of this reign, had fallen victims to the revenge 
and despotism of the court. But as the historian forbears to 
specify the number or the names of the patriot members who thus 
died for the liberties of their country, I have contented myself 
with asserting only what I knew to be fact; and for the, " some," 
of this writer have contented myself with substituting, <( one." 
Whitelocke records a vote of the Parliament in 1(54(5, by which 
150001. are given, in three equal divisions, to Mr. Strode's kin- 
dred, and to the children of Sir John Elliot and those of Sir 
Peter Hammond, <( for the sufferings of their parents, &c. for 
opposing the illegalities of that time."* From this it might te 
inferred that Mr. Strode and Sir P. Hammond had peiished by 
the same fate with Sir J. Elliot : but as this is not expressly 
mentioned by Whitelocke, (who is silent also as to the parti- 
cular cause of Sir John Elliot's death,) I shall not insist on it. Of 
Sir John Elliot's doom his family have preserved a memorial in a 
portrait, which was drawn of him during his imprisonment and 
not long before his decease. 

[* White. Mem. p. 238.] 



218 LIFE OF MILTON. 

by side with that of the court; and their rigor-* 
ous persecution of the Puritans, which was 
offensive to the feelings of the humane and to 
the moderation of the liberal, had excited 
the fears and the jealousies of the wise. The 
power of the episcopal courts had every 
where been urged into unusual animation 
by the superintendence and incitement of 
the formidable High-Commission; and almost 
every diocese had witnessed scenes of rigour 
similar to those which had disgraced and ex- 
asperated the capital. 

In this trembling state of things, when 
Milton perceived that his country was pro- 
ceeding resolutely to assert her liberty, he 
imagined that he was complying with a ne- 
cessary duty, and was taking his proper part 
in the promotion of the common cause, by 
engaging in the behalf of ecclesiastical free- 
dom with the bishops. 

The church of England at this unfortu- 
nate crisis could boast among her prelates 
of a Williams, a Davenant, a Hall, and an 
Usher; — men illustrious for their talents, 
eminent by their learning, amiable for their 
virtues, and venerable for their piety: but un- 
happily at their head was placed a prelate, 
whose views were narrow, whose superstition 
was abject and intolerant, and who was 



LIFE OE MILTON. 219 

pleased to be the supporter of that despo- 
tism which supported his own. 

Much as I dislike the principles and the 
temper of the unfortunate Laud, I would 
willingly believe that the conduct, which pro- 
duced such ruinous consequences to his cause 
and to the whole community, was the offspring 
of good motives, and that he intended well as 
a christian, though he acted perniciously as 
a politician. For his bigoted observance of 
ceremonies he could plead the example of 
some of his most eminent predecessors; and, 
at any other period than that in which he 
lived, when it was considered and w^as per- 
haps designed as a conci^litory advance to 
the Roman church, 1 this observance would 
have been an innocent if not an inoffensive 
display of littleness. His support of an arbi- 
trary court is as easily to be pardoned by the 
liberal and comprehensive mind, which can 
allow for the effects of education or for the 
natural, and of course venial corruption of 
office in its influence on the understanding 
and the heart. But when I see him con- 



* Archbishop Laud is certainly exempt from any suspicion 
of a bias towards popery: but he entertained a chimerical 
notion of the practicability of an union between the Churches 
of England and of Rome; and he weakly hoped that this great 
object might be accomplished by mutual and equal concessions. 



220 LIFE OF MILTON". 

founding the cause of Christ with that of the 
prelate; when I observe him persecuting 
with merciless rigour men of exemplary lives, 
united with him in every point of Christian 
faith, and whose sole crime was a conscien- 
tious opposition to the hierarchal dignity, and 
a regard to what they deemed to be the sim- 
plicity of the gospel; when I contemplate him 
on the judgment seat, "uncovering his head 
and thanking God on the passing of a cruel 
sentence which he had himself dictated ; 
when I see him afterwards in his closet re- 
cording;: with calm rancour and cold-blooded 
exultation the execution of these judicial 
barbarities; when I behold him insulting 
the age of the mild and liberal Abbot and 
spurning him from his throne, to obtain 
premature possession of the metropolitan 
power; when I remark him ruining, with 
vengeance as ungrateful as it was unrelent- 
ing, the first patron of his fortunes, bishop 
Williams, whose hand had placed the mitre 
on his head — my charity must necessarily 
falter, and I cannot immediately decide that 

* When an inhuman sentence was passed upon Dr. Leigh - 
ton, Laud pulled off his cap in the court, and thanked God for 
it. The prelate noted in his diary the execution of these butcher- 
ing sentences of the Star Chamber and High Commission with 
the cool malignity of a fiend. 



LIFE OF MILTON* 221 

he stands accountable for nothing more than 
erroneous judgment. He wished indeed 
for the prosperity of the church, but only 
as it was blended with the splendour of the 
hierarchy; and he laboured for its aggran- 
disement, as Philip laboured for that of 
Macedon or Frederic for that of Prussia, 
that ft might form the broader and more ele- 
vated pedestal to his own individual great- 
ness. The archbishop however and the 
monarchs pursued their objects with very 
different degrees of wisdom, and conse- 
quently of success: for while the measures 
of the latter were conducted to a prosperous 
issue by prudence and conciliation, as the 
means of power, those of the former were 
led to disappointment by rashness and irri- 
tation, in their common characters as the 
causes of unpopularity and weakness. By 
the prelate's conduct his party was covered 
with odium; and it was deserted by the x wise 
who foresaw its approaching ruin, and by 
the moderate who were disgusted with its 
tyranny. 

x Bishop Williams, when pressed by the commissaries of the 
High Commission to proceed with rigour against the Puritans 
in his diocese of Lincoln,, did not scruple to say that he would 
" not meddle against the Puritans, as he was sure that they 
" would carry all tilings at last." Plush, vol. i. p, 42 i. This 
was the immediate cause of the good bishop's rain. 



222 LIFE OF MILTON. 

I am strongly attached to the Church of 
England, from whose lap I sprang and at 
whose bosom I have been fostered : but my 
attachment to her is not that of instinct, but 
of reason. I love her not merely because she 
is my mother and my nurse, but because 
she is deserving of my love. I regard her 
as she offers to God a spiritual worship, yet 
condescends to the imperfect nature of the 
worshipper; and keeps as remote from the 
rude and unsightly devotion of Calvin, ^ 
fronj . Jhe ^ch ild i§h_arjd idolatrous m u m mery 
of Rome: I respect her as she extends her 
usefulness by accommodating her ranks to 
those of the community in which she is 
established; and, while she contributes to 
the social harmony by her enforcement of 
its requisite subordination, considers man 
upon a level when she officiates as the minis- 
ter of God: but I give to her my most ardent 
affection when I contemplate her as mild 
and liberal, as uniting order with toleration, 
as the patroness of learning and the encou- 
rager of inquiry, as the determined enemy of 
persecution for opinions, whether it be avowed 
by the stern republicanism of a presbytery 
or by the unfeeling policy of a pontifical con- 
clave. Such is the ground on which I rest my 
affection to my native Church: but if I saw 



LIFE OF MILTON. . 223 

her actuated by a narrow and ferocious spirit, 
guarding her own temporal honours with more 
jealousy than the vital principles of Christ's 
religion, doing evil with the flagitious pre- 
tence that good may be the result, mounted 
on a sanguinary tribunal to suppress opi- 
nion with overwhelming punishment, and 
hearing with delight the groan that issued 
from a bosom hostile to herself — if I saw her 
in this sad state of defection from her own 
character and of apostacy from the religion 
of her Master, I should no longer recognise 
her as the object of my filial reverence; I 
would renounce her with indignation; and, 
throwing her disgraceful favours at her feet, 
I would retire, beyond her corruption and 
her vengeance, to some uncivilized region 
where I might vindicate the name of Jesus 
from her impious profanation, and show him 
to be the author of blessings, not of misery 
to man. 

These sentiments are not mine alone; — 
they are the property of every English chris- 
tian who is undepraved by habit or unse- 
duced by interest. At the period of which 
we are writing, their influence was almost 
universally acknowledged. Numbers, terri- 
fied and shocked by Laud's violences, fled 
over the Atlantic, and planted in the deserts 



224 LIFE OF MILTON. 

of New England the standard of civil and 
of religious freedom. Numbers, reserving 
themselves for more propitious times and 
not despairing of their country, sought a 
temporary asylum in the bosom of Europe; 
and still greater numbers remained in sullen 
and formidable inaction at home, either pro- 
tected by their own situation, as laymen, or 
sheltered, if ministers, in the families of the 
nobility; and all solicitously waiting for the 
moment of reformation or revenge. 

This was now arrived, and they exulted at 
its presence. Defeated by the Scots in conse- 
quence of the disaffection of the English, and 
in the midst of political gloom, which was 
hourly condensing and growing blacker, the 
king, averse as he might be from the measure, 
was at length compelled by the imperious 
circumstances of his situation to have recourse 
in earnest to a parliament: and the represen- 
tative of the nation was accordingly con- 
vened. 

This parliament, as Lord Clarendon wit- 
nesses, was formed wholly of members Y who 

y If we could wish for more evidence (for better there can- 
not be) of the certainty of the fact in question, we might ob- 
tain it from a writer who on this subject is as well entitled per- 
haps to credit as Clarendon himself, Br. Lewis Da Moulin, who 
wrote the " Appeal of the Non-conformists upon their obedience 



LIFE OF MILTON. 225 

were friendly to the government and to the 
Church of England, and who wished not to 
overthrow, but who, disgusted and frightened 
by the spectacle which had been presented 
to them, were resolute to redress and ardent 
to reform. The power, which the present 
state of things threw into their hands, enabled 
them to cut off, with an immediate and effec- 
tual stroke, much of the existing mischief in 
its pernicious source. In the second month 
of their sitting, they impeached the unfortu- 
nate primate; they rescued his victims from 
their dungeons ; they recalled his exiles z to 

to God and the King," in i681, affirms that f< The Parliament," 
(the Long Parliament,) " both Lords and Commons, was most if 
not all composed of peaceable, orthodox Church of England men, 
all conforming to the rites and ceremonies of episcopacy; but yet 
greatly averse to popery and tyranny, and the corrupt party of the 
Church of England that inclined toward Rome," &c. 

z The returning Puritans might have exulted over their 
prostrate persecutor in nearly the same strains of triumph, 
which Isaiah, in his two-fold character of prophet and of poet, 
so nobly ascribes to the exiles of Israel on the fall of the King 
of Babylon. " How hath the oppressor ceased ! — He, who 
smote the people in wrath with a continual stroke, he that 
ruled the nations in anger, is persecuted, and none hindereth. — 
All they shall speak, and say unto thee — Art thou also become 
weak as we? Art thou become like unto us? Thy pomp is 
brought down to the ground, and the noise of thy viols. — They 
that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, saying, Is this 
the man that made the earth to tremble? that did shake king- 
doms? — that opened not the house of his prisoners?" The 
Star Chamber and High Commission Courts were abolished by 
an act of the legislature on the 5th of July, 1641. 

Q 



226 LIFE OF MILTON. 

behold his fall; they released the press from 
its " horrid silence/' and permitted it to pour 
its long imprisoned torrent on the heads of 
the oppressor and his party. 

On Milton's return from the continent, 
he found, as he informs us, the clamour loud 
and general against the bishops; some com- 
plaining of their tyranny, and some protest- 
ing against the existence of the mitred hie- 
rarchy itself. It was now beginning to be safe 
to talk: but, the Parliament not being yet 
convened, the public indignation was forced 
still to wait, during a short interval, before 
it could diffuse itself from the press. When 
this rapid propagator of opinions and best 
guardian of truth was at last liberated, the 
prelatical party was assailed on all sides with 
argument and learning, with virulence and 
reproach. Our author, as I believe, was on 
this occasion the leader of the attack; the 
first who became the organ of his own and 
of the popular resentment against the rulers 
of the church. His beloved tutor, Young, 
had been one of the victims of the primate's 
intolerance; and the new polemic entered on 
his career with the blended feeling of public 
and of private wrong, with the zeal of a san- 
guine and with the emotion of an injured 
man. 



LIFE OF MILTON". 227 

His two books, " of Reformation touch- 
ing Church-Government in England/' ad- 
dressed to a friend, discover earnestness and 
integrity; and are the produce of a forci- 
ble and acute, a comprehensive and richly- 
stored mind. " And here withal," he a says, 
" I invoke the Immortal Deity, revealer and 
judge of secrets, that wherever I have in this 
book, plainly and roundly, (though worthily 
and truly) laid open the faults and blemishes 
of fathers, martyrs, or christian emperors, or 
have inveighed against error and supersti- 
tion with vehement expressions, I have done 
it neither out of malice, nor list to speak 
evil, nor any vain glory; but of mere neces- 
sity to vindicate the spotless truth from an 
ignominious bondage." The reformation in 
our Church had not proceeded, as he thought, 
to the proper extent; and the suspension of 
its progress he attributes principally to its 
prelates, " who, though they had renounced 
the Pope, yet hugged the popedom, and 
shared the authority among themselves." He 
gives a minute history of the Church of Eng- 
land from its birth; and, explaining the causes 
of what he deemed to be its imperfect sepa- 
ration from that of Rome and its halting at a 

a Of Reformation, &c. P. W. i. 8. 



228 JLtFE OF MILTON. 

distance behind the other reformed churches, 
he pays no great respect to the venerable 
names of our early reformers, who attested 
the purity of their motives with their blood. 
Though excellent, they were still indeed fal- 
lible men; and, admitting that their ex- 
ample or their doctrine could be employed 
as the shield of error, every true Christian 
would join with our author in exclaiming, 
" more b tolerable it were for the Church of 
God that all these names (of Cranmer, La- 
timer, Ridley, &c.) were utterly abolished, 
like the brazen serpent, than that men's fond 
opinions should thus idolize them, and the 
heavenly truth be thus captivated/' 

His language in these tracts is every 
where original, figurative, and bold: but his 
sentences are either not sufficiently or not 
happily laboured. His words, attentive only 
to sense, appear to rush into their places as 
they can; and whenever their combination 
forms an harmonious period, the effect looks 
like the result of chance, unconcerted and 
unheeded by the writer. Force is that cha- 
racter of style which he principally affects, 
and, that he may obtrude his mind with 
weight and impression on the mind of his 

k Of Reformation, frc. P. W. i. 8. 



LIFE Of MILTON. 229 

reader, he scruples not to avail himself of 
the coarsest images and expressions. His 
object is to array himself in strength; and, 
not satisfied with making us to understand his 
meaning, he must also make us to feel it. His 
matter and his manner are often equally 
erroneous : but his deficiencies are sometimes 
concealed from us by those flashes of imagi- 
nation which cover his rough pages, and are 
sometimes pardoned by us in consequence 
of that conviction which he enforces of the 
thorough honesty of his heart. 

His indignation, though frequently of- 
fensive and rude, is frequently, likewise, elo- 
quent and sublime. " Amongst c many se- 
condary and accessory causes," he remarks, 
" that support monarchy, these are not of 
the least reckoning, though common to all 
other states; the love of the subjects, the 
multitude and valour of the people, and 
store of treasure. In all these things hath 
the kingdom been of late sore weakened, 
and chiefly by the prelates. First, let any 
man consider that if any prince shall suffer 
under him a commission of authority to be 
exercised till all the land groan and cry out 
as against a whip of scorpions, whether this 

c Of Reformation, &c. P. W. i. 3/. 



230 LIFE OF MILTON. 

be not likely to lessen and keel the affections 
of the subject. Next, what numbers of 
faithful and free-born Englishmen and good 
Christians have been constrained to forsake 
their dearest home, their friends and kin- 
dred, whom nothing but the wide ocean, and 
the savage deserts of America could hide or 
shelter from the fury of the bishops? O sir, 
if we could but see the shape of our dear 
mother England, as poets are wont to give 
a personal form to what they please, how 
would she appear, think you, but in a mourn- 
ing weed, with ashes upon her head, and tears 
abundantly flowing from her eyes to behold 
so many of her children exposed at once, and 
thrust from things of dearest necessity, be- 
cause their conscience could not assent to 
things, which d the bishops thought indiffer-* 
ent? What more binding than conscience? 
what more free than indifferency ? Cruel 
then must that indifferency needs be that 
shall violate the strict necessity of conscience; 

d A modern historian, whose integrity, acuteness, and manly- 
spirit entitle him to my highest respect, speaking of the same 
things with Milton, the ceremonies and rituals which were 
enforced with so much unrelenting severity by Laud, remarks 
with incontrovertible truth — " They were imposed by the pre- 
lates as things in themselves indifferent, in which obedience is 
due to the supreme power, without recollecting that whatever 
is indifferent in religion should belong to the votary's discretion 
and choice." Laing's Hist, of Scotland, b. i. 79. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 231 

merciless and inhuman that free choice and 
liberty that shall break asunder the bonds of 
religion! Let the astrologer be dismayed at 
the portentous blaze of comets and impres- 
sions in the air, as foretelling troubles and 
changes to states ; I shall believe there can- 
not be a more ill-boding sign to a nation 
(God turn the omen from us) than when the 
inhabitants to avoid insufferable grievances 
are enforced by heaps to forsake their native 
country/' 

His address, in the course of this work, 
to the two nations of England and Scotland, 
united at that time in strenuous resistance to 
the government, is in the same high and spi- 
rited style. " Go e on both hand in hand, O 
nations, never to be disunited. Be the praise 
and the heroic song of all posterity. Merit 
this: but seek only virtue, not to extend your 
limits^ (for what need you win a fading, tri- 
umphant laurel out of the tears of wretched 
men?) but to settle the pure worship of God 
in his church, and justice in tfae state. Then 
shall the hardest difficulties smooth them- 
selyes before you: f envy shall sink to hell: 

e Of Reformation, &c. P. W. i. 46. 

f Invidia infelix furias amnemque severum 
Cocyti metuetj tortosque Ixionis angues., 
lmmanemque rotam ct non exsuperabile saxum. 

Vir. Geor. 1.3. 



252 LIFE OF MILTON 

craft and malice be confounded, whether it 
be homebred mischief or outlandish * cun- 
ning. Yea, other nations will then court to 
serve you; for lordship and victory are but 
the pages of justice and virtue. Commit 
securely to true wisdom the vanquishing and 
uncasing of craft and subtil ty, which are 
but her two runagates. Join your invinci- 
ble might to do worthy and godlike deeds; 
and then he who seeks to break your union, 
— a cleaving curse be his inheritance to all 
generations/' 

To this and to other attacks from puritan 
pens bishop Hall thought it necessary to 
reply. This virtuous and able man had for- 
merly at the request of Laud, in the season 
of that prelate's power when he was pur- 
Envy, unblest, shall deep with furies dwell. 
By sad Cocytus in the darkest hell : 
Shall tremble as she sees Ixion bound 
With twisted serpents to the wheel's huge round ; 
Or views the stone that, urged with painful force, 
Toils to the high hill's brow, then bounds with back- 
ward course. 

s This alludes to those popish intrigues, which certainly con- 
tributed to the calamities of our author's times. The court of 
Rome by its agents, the Jesuits, endeavoured in the first instance 
to gain the king and his party, and by their means to crush the 
Puritans. When the steadiness of the king to the Church of 
England disappointed them of this object, they turned against 
him, and were accomplices in his ruin. 



LITE OF MILTON. 233 

suing his triumph over his adversaries, com- 
posed a treatise on the divine right of epis- 
copacy. This work however was so altered 
by the primate before it passed through the 
press, that its pious author, when called upon 
at a later period for the purpose, found some 
difficulty in acknowledging the principles 
avowed in his own book. If the moderation 
of this conscientious prelate and of the ad- 
mirable Usher had happily prevailed at this 
juncture in the ecclesiastical council, the 
Church probably would have stood firm in 
opposition to all the violence of her wild and 
enthusiastic assailants: but the alien spirit 
of intolerance and fierceness, which she had 
imbibed from Laud's influence, deprived her 
of the public affection, and without this sup- 
port she soon tottered and fell. 

Bishop Hall's present treatise bore the 
title of " An humble Remonstrance to the 
High Court of Parliament;" and about the 
same time archbishop Usher published " The 
Apostolical Institution of Episcopacy ." In 
answer to these powerful and learned works, 
Milton wrote two pieces in the same year, 
the first of which he called, " Of Prelatical 
Episcopacy " and the second, " The Rea- 
son of Church Government urged against 
Prelacy ." These, like his former controver- 



23& LIFE OP MILTON. 

sial productions, are distinguished by force, 
acuteness, and erudition: but their language, 
though bearing a greater appearance of ar- 
tifice and labour, is still evidently that of a 
man, more conversant with the authors of 
Greece and Rome than with those of his 
own country, and seems to be formed with- 
out sufficient attention to the genius of his 
native tongue. This observation will apply 
with very diminished force to some of his 
succeeding compositions: but in all of them 
there is an occasional recurrence of foreign 
idioms, and of a classic inversion of phrase, 
not properly admissible in a language in 
which prepositions supply the place and of- 
fice of inflexions. 

The point, at issue between these po- 
lemics, was the divine or the human origin 
of episcopacy, as a peculiar order in the 
church, invested with spiritual rights and 
powers, distinct in kind and preeminent in 
degree. That an officer with the title of 
episcopus or overseer, (corrupted at first by 
our Saxon progenitors into bijcop, and af- 
terwards softened into bishop,) had existed 
in the Church from its first construction by 
the Apostles, was a fact which could not be 
denied: but while this officer was asserted 
by one party to have been nothing more tharx 



LIFE OF MILTOK. 235 

the president of the assembly of elders, he 
was affirmed by the other to have been ele- 
vated above these elders or presbyters by 
essential privileges, by a separate as well as 
by a superior jurisdiction. The temporal 
possessions and rights of the prelacy could 
not properly constitute any part of the con- 
troversy. As a portion of the political sys- 
tem of the country and tracing their pedi- 
gree no higher than to the civil establishment 
of the Church, these adventitious circum- 
stances were to be debated on the ground of 
expediency alone; and to blend them with the 
immediate and distinct object in question 
seems to have been an unfair practice of the 
puritan disputants, for the purpose of increas- 
ing the unpopularity of their adversaries- 
Till the Church was adopted by the govern- 
ment, under Constantine, its officers could not 
be invested with civil rank or with corporate 
property: but the subsequent accession of 
political importance would not supersede 
their spiritual jurisdiction, and could not be 
denounced as incompatible because it was 
not coeval with their original appointment. 

As a specimen of our author's manner and 
spirit in these pieces, I will cite the follow- 
ing passage respecting the puerile and super- 
stitious Papias, whom Usher had adduced as 



236 LIFE OF MILTON. 

the link which connected episcopacy with 
the apostolical age. "And h this may be a 
sufficient reason to us, why we need no longer 
muse at the spreading of many idle tradi- 
tions so soon after the Apostles, whilst such 
as this Papias had the throwing about, and 
the inconsiderate zeal of the next age, that 
heeded more the person than the doctrine, 
had the gathering them up. Wherever a 
man, who had been in any way conversant 
with the Apostles, was to be found, thither 
flew all the inquisitive ears, although the ex- 
ercise of right instructing was changed into 
the curiosity of impertinent fabling. Where 
the mind was to be edified with solid doc- 
trine, there the fancy was soothed with so- 
lemn fables: with less fervency was studied 
what St. Paul or St. John had w r ritten, than 
was listened to one that could say, ' here he 
taught; here he stood; this was his stature; 
and thus he went" habited :' and, < Q happy 
house that harboured him, and that cold 
stone whereon he rested; this village where- 
in he wrought such a miracle, and that pave- 
ment bedewed with the warm effusion of his 
last blood, that sprouted up into eternal 
roses to crown his martyrdom !"— From the 

h Of Prelatical Episco. P. W. i. 69. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 237 

last of these works " The reason of Church 
Government, &c." we have already cited 
some fine passages respecting the writer and 
his poetic contemplations; and with these 
we shall content ourselves as sufficient speci- 
mens of the composition* 

These productions of Milton's w^ere un- 
questionably the most learned and able on 
the puritan side of the controversy. But the 
piece which seems most to have attracted 
the public attention was a pamphlet, written 
by the united powers of five of the presbyte- 
rian divines, under the appellation of Smec- 
tymnuus, a word formed with the initial let- 
ters of the names of the authors, Stephen 
Marsha], Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, 
Matthew Newcomen, and William Spurstow. 

To this publication bishop Hall replied 
in " A Defence of the Remonstrance;" and 
Milton's formidable pen, drawn again in 
angry opposition to the prelate, produced 
" Animadversions on the Remonstrant's De- 
fence." This work is thrown into the form 
of a dialogue between the remonstrant and 
his answerer, that passages from the prelate's 
pages, being assigned to the mouth of the 
former, may be confounded in their de- 
tached and helpless state by the remarks of 



238 LIFE OF MILTON. 

the latter. " Why £ this close and succinct 
manner/' says our author, " was rather to be 
chosen, this was the reason, chiefly that the 
ingenious reader, without further amusing 
himself in the labyrinth of controversial an- 
tiquity, may come to the speediest way to 
see the truth vindicated and sophistry taken 
short at the first false bound/' The replies of 
the animadverlcr are always severe and fre- 
quently jocose; and there prevails through- 
out the piece a grim smile which sharpens 
and aggravates the offence. 

When we contemplate these works as the 
productions of one year, and of a man oc- 
cupied with the fatiguing duties of an in- 
structor of boys, we must necessarily wonder 
at that unwearied industry, that ready appli- 
cation of various knowledge, and that exu- 
berant fertility of ardent mind which their 
composition so manifestly discovers. These 
five pieces were written in 1641, when their 
author was thirty-three years of age. 

In the beginning of 1642, his " Animad- 
versions," which unquestionably were per- 
sonal and rude, excited a reply from the pen, 
as it was imagined, of a son of the insulted 
bishop; and this connexion of the youthful 

1 P.W. i. 154. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 239 

writer might extenuate the violence, if it 
could not justify the calumnies of his " Mo- 
dest confutation," as he was pleased to call 
it, " against a slanderous and scurrilous li- 
bel." If this reply indeed had been pub- 
lished with its author's name, its motives 
would probably have atoned with Milton 
for its virulence; and his own filial piety, af- 
fected by the spectacle of a generous youth 
rushing to present his bosom to the wound 
intended for his father's, would have spared 
the enemy, and have warned him from the 
combat in the words of iEneas — 

Fallit te incautum pietas tua., &c. 

But the publication was anonymous ; and, 
heaping enormous falsehoods on its adver- 
sary's head, it attempted to overwhelm his 
innocence with strong abuse and with ran- 
dom accusation. 

The " Apology for Smectymnuus" was the 
result of this accumulated provocation : and 
the call of defence made it necessary for 
our author to relate some circumstances re- 
specting himself of which we should other- 
wise have been ignorant. The most ob- 
jectionable part of this performance is that 
which attacks Hall and his satires; its most 



240 LIFE Of MILTON. 

splendid, an eloquent and merited eulogy 
on the first acts of the Long Parliament. 

This production seems to have closed the 
controversy. Weapons, more effectual than 
pens, were drawn against the Church; and, 
exposed by the injudicious conduct of some 
of its prelates, 1 " it fell under the assault. If 
argument and reason could have prevailed, 
the result would probably have been differ- 
ent. The learning of Usher and the wit of 
Hall certainly preponderated in the contest; 
and they seem to have been felt not only 
by the Smectymnuan divines but by Milton 
himself. The affected contempt with which 
he speaks of " the dust and pudder in anti- 
quity; of " his respected friends lying at 
the mercy of a coy and flurting style;" of 
" their antagonist vapouring them out with 

k I allude, particularly, to the intemperate and most unsea- 
sonable protest, signed by twelve bishops and drawn up by 
archbishop Williams, which was presented to the King and by 
him communicated to the Lords, (on the 30th of Dec. 164J,) 
against the legality of all the acts of the Legislature, during the 
compulsory absence of the prelates from their places in the 
Upper House. Archbishop Williams's accustomed prudence and 
moderation seem on this occasion to have deserted him: but the 
strong return of court favour, even at this inauspicious period, 
had not been unproductive of effect upon his conduct. In the 
inflammable moment when it was made, this protest instantly 
excited an explosion, which expelled the governors of the 
church from their seats in the Legislature, and shook the old 
hierarchy of England to its base. 



JLIFE OF MILTON. 241 

quips and snapping adagies, and employing 
weak arguments headed with sharp taunts/' 
sufficiently betrays the weak points of his 
friends, and the strong of his opponents. If 
the Church indeed, at this crisis, could 
have been upheld by the abilities of its sons, 
it would have been supported by these ad- 
mirable prelates; but numbers, exasperation 
and enthusiasm were against them. The 
storm raged beyond the controll of any hu- 
man voice, and the vessel appeared to be 
lost: she was soon however to be launched 
again in all her graceful pride; and, favoured 
by the breath of heaven, to pursue her pros- 
perous course till the misconduct of her na- 
vigators shall again endanger her; or till she 
attain perhaps the most distant limit assigned 
for the duration of human institutions. 

The tone of this debate was far from 
mild; and all the combatants, with the excep- 
tion of Usher, seem to have been careless of 
manners, and not less intent on giving pain 
to their adversaries, than on the discovery 
or the establishment of truth. The temper 
of polemics and of literary disputants is, in 
all ages, the same; but controversy had not 
yet learned to conceal the malignity of her 
bosom under the disguise of a polished brow 
and a smiling cheek. On this occasion also 

R 



242 



LIFE OF MILTON". 



many circumstances concurred, as we have 
already remarked, to heighten that ferocity, 
which always marks her character when in- 
terests of important moment constitute her 
objects. In this dispute, one party was urged 
to the defence by every thing which educa- 
tion or possession had endeared; while the 
other was pressed to the attack by the recol- 
lection of past, and by the terror of future 
oppression. 

With an ardent temper and a brilliant 
imagination, Milton was not formed for cool 
and temperate disputation. " I 1 could not/' 
he says, " to my thinking, honour a good 
cause more from the heart than by defend- 
ing it earnestly." He talked, indeed, " ra of 
pleading against his confuter by no other 
advocates than silence and sufferance; and 
speaking deeds against faltering words:" but 
his bold and sanguine nature prohibited such 
efficient acquiescence, and hurried him into 
active war. When his adversary called upon 
all " Christians to stone him, as a miscreant, 
whose impunity would be their crime," we 
cannot reasonably wonder at the warmth of 
his expressions, or at the little scruple with 
which he scattered his various instruments of 



1 Apol. for Sraect. P. W. i. 207. 



m Ibid. i. 209. 



LIFE OF MILTOIN". 243 

pain. These polemical tracts of our author, 
though perhaps some of the least valuable of 
his works, are so illumined with knowledge 
and with fancy, and open to us such occa- 
sional glimpses of a great and sublime mind, 
that they must always be regarded as afford- 
ing an ample compensation for any harsh- 
ness of manner with which they may some- 
times offend. 

We have now conducted our author to a 
period of his history , when an event took place, 
which, by its immediate and its remote re- 
sult, was destined to interrupt the even te- 
nor of his domestic life, and to afflict his 
heart to the latest moment of his existence. 
" About Whitsuntide," (1643) says his ne- 
phew, " he n took a journey into the country, 
no body about him certainly knowing the 
reason, or that it w r as more than a journey of 
recreation. After a month's stay, home he 
returns a married man, who set out a ba- 
chelor; his wife being Mary, the eldest daugh- 
ter of Mr. Richard Powell, then a justice of 
the peace, of Forest-Hill near Shotover in 
Oxfordshire/' 

Milton's matrimonial choice seems, in 
this instance, to have been the suggestion of 

■ Philips, p. 18. 



244 LIFE OF MILTON. 

fancy alone, and its consequences were those 
which might have been expected from a con- 
nexion so evidently imprudent. Strongly at- 
tached with all her family to the royalist party, 
and accustomed to the affluent hospitality of 
her father's house, " where there was," as Au- 
brey mentions, " a great deal of company, and 
merriment, and dancing," the wife of Milton, 
would not probably find much gratification 
in the frugal establishment, the retired and 
studious habits, or the political conversation 
of her literary and republican husband. In 
the event, the effect followed regularly and 
immediately from its cause. After a month's 
experience of her new life, to the full taste 
of which the departure of her friends, who 
had been present at the nuptial festivities, 
had only just resigned her, the lady sighed 
for the gaieties which she had left; and, ob- 
taining permission by the earnest request of 
her relations for a short absence, she revi- 
sited Forest-Hill. 

About this time some new pupils, whom 
Milton had consented to admit under his 
care, were received into his family ; and his 
father, who had lately lived with his younger 
son in Reading, till the taking of that town 
in the April of the present year (16'43) by the 
earl of Essex, now came to form a part of 



LIFE OF MILTON 245 

the establishment in Aldersgate-street. In 
this asylum the respectable old man resided 
till l647 v when he closed a long and useful 
life in the embraces of a son, by whose emi- 
nence his early cares were fully justified, and 
by whose piety they were as affectionately 
requited. 

In the list of Milton's friends, at this pe- 
riod, we find the names of the lady Margaret 
Ley and of captain Dobson her husband, 
who seem to have entertained a high value 
for our author, and by him to have been 
equally esteemed. The lady was the daughter 
of sir James Ley, who, rising at the bar, was 
advanced by James I. to the title of earl of 
Marlborough, and to the important office of 
High Treasurer. She was celebrated by her 
contemporaries for her talents and her learn- 
ing; and from Milton she received the com- 
pliment of a sonnet, not adequate perhaps 
to the occasion, and certainly not compar- 
able in poetic merit to that which he had 
written, in the preceding year, when by the 
King's near approach the city had been 
threatened with an assault. 

As the time, limited for the return of his 
wife, was now passed, he thought it neces- 

° The King advanced as far as Brentford., in his approach to 
the city, on the 13th of Nov. 1642. 



246 LIFE OF MILTON. 

sary to write to her on the subject of her en- 
gagement. When no answer was made to 
this and to some subsequent letters, he de- 
termined on sending a messenger to Forest- 
Hill. But the crisis was unpropitious to his 
views and to the reputation of his new allies. 
The prosperous fortunes of the King, whose 
forces had defeated those of the Parliament 
under Fairfax p in the north and under Wal- 
ler q in the west, had extraordinarily elated 
the spirits of his party; and had occasioned 
the Powells to repent of their republican 
connexion, by which their feeling was hurt 
and their interests might eventually be in- 
jured. They lost no lime, therefore, to atone 
for their imprudence by breaking the offen- 
sive alliance, and by affronting its object. 
The husband's messenger was dismissed with 
contempt, and his resentment, irritated by 
these repeated wounds on his sensibility, was 
openly set at defiance. 

The measure upon which, under these cir- 
cumstances, he resolved, was that of repudiat- 
ing a wife, who by her desertion of him had 
disappointed the nuptial contract of all its 
objects, and had left with him nothing be- 
longing to matrimony but its chain. To 

i' At Athersion Moon * At Lansdown. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 247 

justify such a proceeding to the world, and 
at the same time perhaps to conciliate for 
it the countenance of the legislature, he 
published in 1644 two editions, (one anony- 
mously and one with his name,) of " The 
Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce/' This 
treatise, which was inscribed to the Parlia- 
ment, was soon followed by " The judgment 
of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce:" by 
" Tetrachordon," and 4i Colasterion." The 
two last of these tracts were written in 1645; 
the latter of them as a reply to an antagonist 
without a name, and the former as an ex- 
position of the four passages r in the sacred 
writings, which are supposed more immedi- 
ately to respect the permanency of the mar- 
riage-obligation. 

By these writings the fury of the Presby- 
terian Clergy was inscantly kindled; and, un- 
mindful of the recent and great services, 
which they had experienced from the au- 

r Gen. i. 27, 28. Deut. xxiv. 1, 2. Matt. v. 32, 31. 
1 Cor. vii. 13 to 10. 
Herbert Palmer, a member of the Assembly of Divines, in 
a Sermon preached before the Parliament, blames the legisla- 
ture for suffering <{ a wicked' book deserving to be burnt, whose 
author had been so impudent as to set his name to it, and de" 
dicate it to themselves, to be abroad without censure." [Todd's 
Life of Milton.] 1 have seen this sermon, preserved in the cu- 
rious library of James Bindley, Esq. 



248 LIFE OF MILTON. 

thor's pen, they now assailed him, from the 
pulpit and the press, with violent and acri- 
monious hostility. Solicitous also to make 
him the object of more effective vengeance, 
they endeavoured to infuse their passions 
into the legislature; and actually caused 
him to be summoned before the House of 
Lords. From this tribunal however he was 
soon honourably dismissed; and the Presby- 
terian ministers were left without any con- 
solation for the loss of an able friend, and 
the excitement of a formidable enemy. Mil- 
ton was now irrevocably alienated from their 
cause; and at last he fully discovered that 
these pretended zealots of liberty sought only 
their own aggrandizement, and the power of 
imposing upon others that yoke which they 
had themselves been unable to bear. On 
a question less incontrovertibly right, and 
perhaps more certainly important, we shall 
soon have occasion to notice our consistent 
asserter of liberty in determined opposition 
to these sanctified advocates of insurrection 
and of tyranny. 

On the subject of divorce he makes out a 
strong case, and fights with arguments which 
are not easily to be repelled. The whole con- 
text of the Holy Scriptures, the laws of the 
first christian emperors, the opinions of some 



LIFE OF MILTOST. 24$ 

of the most eminent among the early re- 
formers, and a projected statute of Ed- 
ward VI are adduced by him for the pur- 
pose of demonstrating that, by the laws of 
God and by the inferences of the most vir- 
tuous and enlightened men, the power of di- 
vorce ought not to be rigidly restricted to 
those causes which render the nuptial state 
unfruitful, or which taint it with a spu- 
rious offspring. Regarding mutual support 
and comfort as the principal object of this 
union, he contends that whatever defrauds 
it of these ends essentially vitiates the con- 
tract, and must necessarily justify its disso- 
lution. " What, therefore, God hath joined, 
let no man put asunder." " But here/' says 
our author, " the christian prudence lies, to 
consider what God hath joined. Shall we 
say that God hath joined error, fraud, unfit- 
ness, wrath, contention, perpetual loneliness, 
perpetual discord? Whatever lust, or wine, 
or witchery, threat or enticement, avarice or 
ambition hath joined together, faithful or un- 
faithful, christian with anti-christian, hate with 
hate, or hate with love — shall w r e sav this is 
God's joining?** 8 In another passage he ex- 
presses himself with the most happy energy 
on the effect of this discordancy of character. 

'Tetrac. P. W. ii. 178. 



250 LITE OF MILTON. 

" But unfitness and contrariety frustrate and 
nullify for ever, unless it be a rare chance, 
all the good and peace of wedded conversa- 
tion; and leave nothing between them enjoy- 
able, but a prone and savage necessity, not 
worth the name of marriage, unaccompanied 
with love/' 1 

Though his arguments failed, and in- 
deed they could not reasonably hope to pro- 
duce general conviction, their effect was far 
from being inconsiderable; and a party, dis- 
tinguished by the name of Miltonists, attested 
the power of his pen, and gave consequence 
to his pleading for divorce. 11 The legislature 
however, coinciding evidently with a large 
majority of the nation, seem to have consi- 
dered the evil, resulting from the indisso- 
lubleness of marriage, as not to be weighed 
against the greater good; and their wisdom 
permitted the abilities of Milton to be ex- 
erted in vain against that condition of the 

* Colast. P. W. ii. 24p. 
* " To these things I must add, that after his Majesty's re- 
storation, when the subject of divorce was under consideration 
with the Lords upon the account of John Lord Ros, or Roos, 
his separation from his wife, Anne Pierpont, eldest daughter to 
Henry Marquis of Dorchester, he (Milton) was consulted by 
an eminent member of that house, as he was, about that time, 
by a chief officer of state, as being the person that was knowing 
in that affair." Wood's Fast. Oxon. p. 2Ql. 



LIFE OP MILTOIS". £51 

contract which provided the most effectually 
for the interests of the offspring, and which 
offered the best means of intimately blend- 
ing the fortunes, the tempers, and the man- 
ners of ihe parents. 

Milton certainly entertained the opinions, 
which he professed ; and, to evince to the 
world his consciousness of freedom, he pro- 
ceeded, at this time when " x the golden 
reins of discipline and government in the 
church were let loose," to prefer his addresses 
to a beautiful and an accomplished young 
lady, the daughter of a Doctor Davis. It has 
been intimated that the lady was rather averse 
from the proposed union; but her objections 
(and her friends are not stated to have formed 
any) seem not to have been of a very serious 
nature, as it appears that the accomplish- 
ment of the match was prevented solely by 
the intervention of an extraordinary and in- 
teresting occurrence. 

The inauspicious aspect at this juncture, 
or rather the desperate situation of the royal 
cause, in consequence of the decisive battle 
at Naseby/ made the family of Milton's wife 
reluctantly sensible of the folly of their con- 

x An expression in the famous Remonstrance presented by 
the Parliament to the King at Hampton Court, on the 1st of 
December 1 641. y In Leicestershire. 



252 LIFE OF MILTON. 

duct, and solicitous to propitiate the resent- 
ment of an injured husband, whose assist- 
ance might now probably be immediately 
requisite for their protection or subsistence. 
With no resemblance to the elevated equa- 
nimity of the man, who had honoured them 
with his alliance, they rose or fell, like the 
mob of their species, with the flow or the 
ebb of fortune, and were insolent or abject 
as this unstable power visited or deserted 
them. The plan for the accomplishment of 
their purposes was conceived and executed 
with successful ingenuity. Combining with 
his friends, who concurred in the wish for a 
reconciliation between the pair who had 
been united at the altar, they watched our 
author's visits, and as he was in the house 
of a relation/ thej^ stationed his wife in an 
inner apartment, with instructions to appear 
at the proper time, and to supplicate for 
his pardon upon her knees. Faithful to the 
lesson of her friends, she sustained her part 
with skill, and probably with feeling. The 
scene was surprising, and the resistance of 
Milton, which seemed firm only for a mo- 
ment, fell before its weighty effect. Yield- 
ing to the entreaties of beauty, and perhaps 

z The name of this relation was Blackborough, and his resi- 
dence in the lane of St. Martins le Grand. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 253 

also to the recurrence of love, what he ap- 
peared to concede only to the solicitations 
of his friends, and dismissing every irritating 
recollection from his bosom, he re-admitted 
the wife, who had deserted and insulted him, 
into the full possession of his affections. Not 
satisfied with this single triumph over his re- 
sentment, he extended his placability to those 
who were the abettors, if not the instigators of 
her olfence; and, receiving her parents and 
her family under his roof, he protected and 
maintained them in this hour of their danger 
and distress. If his interest with the victorious 
party was unable to obtain complete immu- 
nity for his royalist connexions, it availed to 
save them from ruin, and to preserve the 
bulk of a property/ from which he was des- 
tined to receive not even the stipulated for- 
tune of his wife. Conduct of so high a cha- 
racter, the offspring of a large and a feeling 

a Mr. Todd, to whose industry and accuracy I am frequently 
indebted, says upon this occasion, " 1 observe in the Catalogue 
of the lords, knights, and gentlemen, who have compounded 
for their estates," printed at London in 1655, that he (Milton's 
father-in-law) is thus branded as well as punished. " Richard 
Powel, delinquent, per John Pye, esq. 5JQI. 12s. 3d." Delin- 
quent, was the usual term assigned to the Royalists by the Par- 
liament and its adherents, and expressed the idea of disaffected 
or failing in duty to the public cause: in this place it may mean 
nothing more than defaulter with reference to the composition, 
which was not a very heavy one. 



254 LIFE OF MILTON. 

heart, is above the ornament of any laboured 
panegyric. Let the facts, in the intercourse 
of Milton with the Powells, be placed dis- 
tinctly and at once in our view, and nothing 
but atrocious prejudice can withhold us from 
admiring the magnanimity of the former, and 
from despising while we pity the meanness of 
the latter. 

Milton was now reunited to his wife; but, 
his augmented family being too large for his 
present habitation, he was obliged to place 
her in a friend's house till a more spacious 
mansion, which he had recently hired in Bar- 
bican, could be made ready for her recep- 
tion. When the necessary preparations were 
completed, she removed to her new resi- 
dence; whither she was soon followed by her 
parents and her numerous brothers and sis- 
ters, who were not unwilling to share in the 
entertainment which was now become requi- 
site for their support. In this asylum they 
continued till the question respecting their 
property was adjusted with the government, 
and till a period subsequent to the death of 
the author's father in 1647. 

Under the pressure of these domestic em- 
barrassments, and of the momentous interest 
at this crisis of the public scene, the intellect 
of Milton, obedient to a heart actuated by 



LIFE OF MILTON. 255 

the purest benevolence, was busy in promot- 
ing the welfare of the human race. The year 
1644, which saw this great man immersed in 
his controversy about divorce, beheld him 
also imparting to the world his ideas on the 
subject of education, and defending, with a 
power which has never been exceeded, that 
great guardian of liberty and truth, the free- 
dom of the press. 

His " Treatise on Education" is addressed, 
in the form of a letter, to Mr. Samuel Hart- 
lib; a man to whom sir William Petty subse- 
quently inscribed one of his first works; and 
who was celebrated for the compass of his 
learning, and the energy of his public spi- 
rit. We have already had occasion to notice 
the peculiar system of instruction adopted 
by Milton. Convinced of the lavish expen- 
diture of time in the public schools, where 
the highest object proposed to hope was the 
acquisition of the classic tongues, he con- 
ceived it to be possible to initiate the young 
student into science and language by the same 
process; and to make an acquaintance with 
things the immediate result of an acquaint- 
ance with words. 

Between the years of twelve and twenty- 
one, the pupil, in the schools recommended 
by our author, was to be led through various 



256 LITE Of MILTON. 

languages from grammar to ethics, logic, 
rhetoric, politics, law, theology, criticism, 
composition. Geography was to exhibit to 
him the surface of the globe, and astronomy 
to unfold the heavens: natural philosophy, 
comprehending anatomy and physiology, 
was to make him conversant with the phe- 
nomena of nature, and with the wonders of 
his own frame: the mathematics were to in- 
troduce him to the sciences of architecture, 
enginry or gunnery, fortification and navi- 
gation; and, on his issuing into the world 
from one of these academies, he was to be 
accomplished for any duty, to which his 
country might summon him, in the pulpit 
or at the bar, in the senate or in the field. 
During the course of these studies, which 
visited every region of science, the body of 
the student was to receive its share of culti- 
vation, to be maintained in health by tem- 
perance and to be invigorated by exertion. 
The exercises, directed on this occasion, were 
to be of a military nature, " to instruct the 
youth in the exact use of their weapons, and 
in the rudiments of their soldiership." After 
their exercises and their meals, " their spi- 
rits were to be recreated and composed with 
solemn and divine harmonies of music heard 
or learnt; and their minds sent back to study 



LIFE OF MILTON. 257 

in good tune and satisfaction/' These insti- 
tutions, in short, were to resemble the old 
philosophic schools of Greece, with the rare 
advantage of uniting the martial gymnasia 
of Sparta with the Academus and Lyceum 
of Athens. 

This must be allowed to be a magnificent 
plan of education: but we believe it to be 
calculated only to amuse the fancy, while it 
would be found by experience to disappoint 
the expectation. It was suited however 
to the gigantic mind of Milton, which from 
its own altitude could not distinguish small 
difficulties, and in its pride of power could 
not easily condescend to the effects of infe- 
rior capacity. That he was fully persuaded 
of the practicability of his system cannot 
Well be doubted. " I shall detain you/' he 
says to Hartlib, " now no longer in the de- 
monstration of what we should not do, but 
strait conduct ye to a hill-side, where I will 
point ye out the right path of a virtuous and 
noble education; laborious indeed at the 
first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so 
full of goodly prospect and melodious sounds 
on every side, that the harp of Orpheus was 
not more charming*. I doubt not but we shall 
have more ado to drive our dullest and la- 
ziest youth, our stocks and stubs from the 

s 



258 LIFE OF MILTON. 

infinite desire of such a happy nurture, than 
we have now to hale and drag our choicest 
and hopefullest wits to that asinine feast of 
sow-thistles and brambles, which is com- 
monly set before them as all the food and 
entertainment of their tenderest and most 
docible age." b 

This treatise, though offering to us a 
scheme which in its entire extent we must 
reject as not reducible to practice, is yet 
made valuable by the hints, suggested in it, 
for the improvement of our established mode 
of education. In the higher classes of our 
public schools, more attention, as it would be 
prejudice to deny, might advantageously be 
given to science; and in these seminaries, 
the diet and exercises of our youth might 
be better regulated with reference to health, 
and to the perfection of their bodies. This 
little piece is written in an easier and a 
purer style than the preceding works of its 
author: but in every species of merit it 
must yield to another composition produced, 
nearly about the same time, by the same pen, 
and addressed to the Parliament with the 
title of " Areopagitica, or a speech for the 
liberty of unlicensed printing/' 

The Presbyterians, as we have already 

b Mil. P.W. i. 276. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 259 

remarked, on their rising in these agitated 
times into power, quickly forgot the prin- 
ciples which they had professed in their ad- 
versity; and, declaring against unlimited to- 
leration, discovered by their readiness to vio- 
late the rights of others that their tenderness 
was only for their own. The press was too 
great a power not to be seized by these im- 
postors of liberty; and, abusing their ascend- 
ancy in parliament, they placed this formi- 
dable engine under the same controll of 
which they had lately so indignantly com- 
plained. They were satisfied, in short, that 
the press when it belonged to the church 
could not be too free, or, when it was pos- 
sessed by themselves, too solicitously con- 
fined. Against these apostate-patriots, who 
betrayed their cause with the sanctity of 
profaned religion, Milton now advanced as 
the champion of free discussion; and the ef- 
fect of his zeal in this instance, for the inte- 
rests of genuine liberty, has received the una- 
nimous acclamation of the world. A strong 
cause was never more powerfully defended; 
and truth, in the " Areopagitica," is armed 
by reason and by fancy with weapons which 
are effective with their weight and edge, while 
they dazzle us with their brightness. 

This masterly and eloquent composition 



260 LITE OF MILTON. 

is opened with the most conciliating address; 
and its arguments, which are individually 
strong, derive so much force from their mu- 
tual support in a close and advantageous 
array, as to be absolutely irresistible and im- 
periously to compel our conviction. Show- 
ing that fetters for the press were first con- 
trived by the papal tyranny, and wrought 
to their ultimate perfection by the Spanish 
Inquisition, the pleader for liberty proceeds 
to prove that these shackles are injurious to 
religious and moral truth, which may be be- 
nefited and cannot be injured by any con- 
flict with falsehood: that the circulation of 
flagitious writings cannot be prohibited by 
any restraints upon the press, while the of- 
fensive suspicion offers an insult to the com- 
munity and a discouragement to the learned : 
that, admitting the entire command of the 
press to be attainable, as it certainly is not, 
no good would result from the circumstance 
to morals, as the means of corrupt commu- 
nication w T ould still be infinitely numerous; 

c The turbulent and profligate Sixtus IV, whose enormities 
were exceeded only by those of Alexander VJ, was the first who 
placed the press under the controll of a state inquisitor, or, in 
other words, appointed a licenser of it. He died in 1484, after 
having disgraced the Roman see, and disturbed Italy during 
the space of thirteen years. This is not specified by Milton, 
but was the fact. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 26l 

and as, after all, not ignorance but rejection 
of vice constitutes virtue : that " Adam's 
doom seems to have been that of knowing 
good by evil; and that a fugitive and clois- 
tered virtue was not to he praised, a virtue 
unexercised and unbreathed, that never sal- 
lies out and sees her adversary, but slinks 
out of the race where that immortal garland 
is to be run for not without dust and heat/' 
These are some of his arguments against 
those, who affected to consider the restraint 
of the press as the protection of religion and 
morals. 

To the jealousy of government, demand- 
ing an enslaved press, he replies with incon- 
trovertible truth ; " that a state, governed by 
the rules of justice and fortitude, or a church, 
built and founded upon the rock of faith 
and true knowledge cannot be so pusillani- 
mous " as to dread the most unlimited free- 
dom of discussion. " d I deny not/' says the 
eloquent pleader, " but that it is of great 
concernment in the church and common- 
wealth to have a vigilant eye how books de- 
mean themselves as well as men, and there- 
after to confine, imprison, and do sharpest 
justice on them as malefactors: for books 
are not absolutely dead things, but do con- 
d p. w. i. 289. 



262 LIFE OF MILTON*. 

tain a potency of life in them to be as active 
as that soul was, whose progeny they are: 
nay, they do preserve, as in a viol, the purest 
efficacy and extraction of that living intellect 
that bred them. I know they are as lively, 
and as vigorously productive as those fabu- 
lous dragon's teeth; and, being sown up and 
down, may chance to spring up armed men. 
And yet on the other hand, unless wariness 
be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a 
good book: who kills a man kills a reason- 
able creature, God's image; but he who de- 
stroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills 
the image of God, as it were, in the eye. 
Many a man lives a burden to the earth: 
but a good book is the precious life-blood of 
a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up 
on purpose to a life beyond a life. Tis true 
no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps 
there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages 
do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, 
for the want of which whole nations fare the 
worse. We should be wary therefore what 
persecution we raise against the living la- 
bours of public men ; how we spill that sea- 
soned life of man preserved and stored up in 
books; since we see a kind of homicide may 
be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom, 
and, if it extend to the >vhole impression, a 



LIFE OF MILTON. 263 

kind of massacre; whereof the execution ends 
not in the slaying of an elemental life, but 
strikes at that ethereal and fifth essence, the 
breath of reason itself, and slays an immor- 
tality rather than a life." 

Nothing can be more consonant with the 
general interests of the community than our 
author's liberal yet guarded plan. Let the 
press be as free as the air or the light of hea- 
ven: without the check of a question, let it 
pour its good and its bad into the world; but 
let the names of those by whom it is em- 
ployed be in the hands of the public to en- 
sure a proper responsibility to the laws for 
any infringement of good order, for what- 
ever violation may be offered to morals or 
to the peace of individuals. By the strict 
confinement of this diffuser of opinion, if in 
truth it were practicable among an active 
and enlightened people, a doubtful and fal- 
lacious tranquillity might probably be ob- 
tained: but it would be the repose of bar- 
barous ignorance; it would be stagnation 
and not calm; it would be diseased and me- 
lancholy slumber, separated by infinite de- 
grees from that strong and active and spark- 
ling health which, in the intellectual and the 
moral not less than in the natural world, is 
maintained as it is produced by agitation 



264 LIFE OF MILTON. 

and ferment, by opposition and conflict. In 
that dissonance of religious and political hos- 
tility, which excited the alarm of the timor- 
ous and the bigoted in the convulsed and 
distracted times of our author, he could dis- 
tinguish nothing but the sprightly vigour 
of a young people, exulting in the exercise 
of their powers, " casting off the old and 
wrinkled skin of corruption, waxing young 
again, entering the glorious ways of truth 
and prosperous virtue, and destined to be- 
come great and honourable in these latter 
days/' " Methinks I see in my mind," says 
the advocate of freedom in a strong burst of 
eloquence, " a noble and puissant nation 
rousing herself, like the strong man after 
sleep, and shaking her invincible locks: me- 
thinks I see her, as an eagle, muing her 
mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled 
eyes at the full midday beam; purging and 
unsealing her long abused sight at the foun- 
tain itself of heavenly radiance, while the 
whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, 
with those also that love the twilight flutter 
about amazed at what she means/' 6 

His attack on presbyterian inconsistency 

e P. W. i. 324. The passage should have ended here with 
" means." The imagery is spoilt and broken by the concluding 
words, €f sects and schisms," 



LIFE OF MILTON. 265 

is strong and irresistible. " Who cannot dis- 
cern the fineness of this politic drift, and 
who are the contrivers? that while the bi- 
shops were to be baited down, then all 
presses might be open; it was the people's 
birth-right and privilege in time of parlia- 
ment; — it was the breaking forth of light. 
But now, the bishops abrogated and voided 
out of the church, as if our reformation sought 
no more but to make room for others into 
their seats under another name, the episco- 
pal arts begin to bud again : the cruse of 
truth must run no more oil ; liberty of print- 
ing must be enthralled under a prelatical 
commission of twenty; the privilege of the 
people nullified, and, which is worse, the 
freedom of learning must groan again and to 
her old fetters." f The language of this com- 
position is every where lucid and elevated, 
figurative and impressive; and, though not 
entirely free from learned idioms and con- 
structions/ for the age in which it was writ- 
ten it is remarkably pure, and sufficient to 
entitle the writer to a high place among the 
masters of style. 

f P.W. i. 315. 
8 Such as — <e For which Britain hears ill abroad." " But is 
become a dividual movement," " And me perhaps each of 
these dispositions, as the subject was whereon I entered, have 
at other times variously affected," &c. &c. 



266 LIJPE OF MILTON. 

Though the Presbyterians in parliament 
had power to resist the force of this eloquent 
reasoning, it could not be heard without ef- 
fect. If however it covered the faces of these 
traitors to their cause with shame, it was un- 
able to bend their hearts into contrition. That 
egregious insult on freedom and the commu- 
nity, a licenser of the press, was certainly con- 
tinued throughout the whole duration of their 
power: though in 1649 we find Gilbert Mab- 
bot* conscientiously resigning this invidious 

h The account of this transaction is preserved by Dr. Birch, 
and from him I shall transcribe it. 

" Gilbert Mabbot continued in his office till May 22, l64Q t 
when, as Mr. Whitelocke observes, " upon his desire, and rea- 
sons against licensing of books to be printed, he was discharged 
of that employment." And we find a particular account of the 
affair in a weekly paper, printed in 4to, and intitled, " A. per- 
fect diurnall of some passages in parliament, and the daily pro- 
ceedings of the army under his excellency the lord Fairfax. 
From Monday May 21 to Monday May 28, l64g. Collected for 
the satisfaction of such as desire to be truly informed, N° 304." 
In which, under Tuesday May 28, p. 2531, we read as fol- 
lows : fi Mr. Mabbot hath long desired several members of the 
house, and lately the Council of State, to move the house, 
that he might be discharged of licensing books for the future 
upon the reasons following, viz. 

" I. Because many thousand of scandalous and malignant 
pamphlets have been published with his name thereunto, as if 
he had licensed the same (though he never saw them) on purpose 
(as he conceives) to prejudice him in his reputation amongst the 
honest party of this nation. 

c< II. Because that employment (as he conceives) is unjusj; 



LIFE OF MILTON. £67 

and indeed impracticable office, and bor- 
rowing the motives and the defence of his 
conduct from the work, to which we have 
been attending. 

We have already noticed that, in the year 
(1645) succeeding the publication of this 
piece, our authors controversy on the sub- 
ject of divorce was brought to a conclusion; 
and that the re-union of himself and his wife, 

and illegall, as to the end of its first institution, viz. to stop 
the presse for publishing any thing, that might discover the 
corruption of church and state in the time of popery, episcopacy, 
and tyranny, the better to keep the people in ignorance, and 
carry on their popish, factious, and tyrannical designs, for the 
enslaving and destruction both of the bodies and souls of all the 
free people of this nation. 

" III. Because licensing is as great a monopoly as ever was 
in this nation, in that all men's judgments, reasons, &c. are to 
be bound up in the licenser's (as to licensing:) for if the author 
of any sheete, booke, or treatise, wrote not to please the fancy, 
and come within the compasse of the licenser's judgment, then he 
is not to receive any stamp of authority for publishing thereof. 

" IV. Because it is lawfull (in his judgment) to print any 
booke, sheete, &c. without licensing, so as the authors and prin- 
ters do subscribe their true names thereunto, that so they may be 
liable to answer the contents thereof ; and if they offend therein, 
then to be punished by such lawes, as are or shall be for those 
cases provided. 

(< A Committee of the Council of State being satisfied with 
these and other reasons of M. Mabbot concerning licensing, the 
council of state reports to the house: upon which the house 
ordered this day, that the said M. Mabbot should be discharged 
of licensing books for the future/' 

Birch's Life of Milt. p. xxvi, 



268 LIFE OF MILTON. 

which subsequently took place, was effected 
by means as little reputable to the lady's 
relations as they were honourable to him- 
self In this year he discovered that the 
Muse, whom he had for so long a time de- 
serted, was still dear to him. From the pe- 
riod of his returning to England, the pastoral, 
which he had hung upon the tomb of his 
friend, Charles Deodati, was the only poem 
of any length which he had composed. The 
discharge of his serious duties had not ad- 
mitted of his indulging in his favourite re- 
creation; and his occupations had been of 
too stubborn and harsh a nature to blend 
with the fine visions of imagination, or to 
melt into the harmony of poetry. Some 
sonnets however he had occasionally pro- 
duced; and in the year now in question he 
found so much time to respire, after his do- 
mestic and his public contests, as to be able 
to prepare an edition of all his English, Ita- 
lian and Latin poems. Of this small volume, 
which was sent into the world with the au- 
thor's name and with a preface by the pub- 
lisher, Humphrey Moseley, the principal 
pieces have already been made the subjects 
of our remark. The novelties therefore ,of 
this collection, which are chiefly the sonnets, 
have now the only claim to our attention. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 269 

The sonnet, as is generally known, is al- 
together of Italian origin; and its structure 
is ascertained with so much rigid precision 
as to be insusceptible of any, or only of the 
most trifling variation. Of the fourteen 
lines, of which it is to consist, the first eight 
are to admit one change only of rhyme for 
their termination; and are to be distributed 
into two stanzas, of which the first verse 
chimes with the last, and the two interme- 
diate ones with each other. The six con- 
cluding lines may either be confined within 
terminations of two similar sounds alter- 
nately arranged, or may be disposed, with 
two additional rhymes, into a quatrain and 
a couplet. 1 Like every short poem, the son- 
net requires strict unity of subject; but it 
solicits ornament from variety of thought, 
on the indispensible condition of a perfect 
subordination. The sentence mav overflow 
the verse, but must not transgress the stanza. 

1 Milton has not always observed this arrangement of the ter- 
minations in the six concluding lines. In his sonnet to Fairfax, 
he has formed the first four of these lines into a third stanza, of 
a similar construction with the two preceding ones; and he has 
made the two last lines to rhyme with the two which imme- 
diately go before them. In his sonnet to Cromwell, he has dis- 
posed these six verses into a similar stanza, and a couplet with a 
new rhyme. He seems to have regarded the order of this part of 
the sonnet as submitted in a great degree to his discretion. 



r J70 LIFE OF MILTON. 

This little poem is impressible with various 
characters; and, while with Petrarch it is 
tender and pathetic, with Dante in equal 
consistency with its nature it is elevated and 
forcible. Peculiarly adapted to the language 
and the taste of its native Italy, it has been 
considered, though in my opinion without 
sufficient reason, as insuperably unaccom- 
modated to those of Britain. When happily 
constructed, it will be found to gratify every 
English ear, attuned to the harmony of verse; 
and the idea, which it suggests, of difficulty 
encountered and overcome must contribute, 
as has been more than once remarked, to 
heighten the power of its effect. 

During the prevalence of our Italian 
school of poetry, this short and pregnant 
composition was much in favour with our 
bards; and in the childhood, as it may be 
called, of the English Muse, it was made 
the vehicle of his love by the tender, the 
gallant, the accomplished and the ill-fated 
Surrey . k In the succeeding generation, the 

k From the notoriety of the fact, it can scarcely be necessary 
to inform the reader, that this ornament of the English nobility, 
(Henry Howard, eldest son of Thomas duke of Norfolk,) fell a 
victim, in the flower of his age, to the jealousy of that capricious 
and remorseless tyrant, Henry VIII. 

When I speak of Surrey as a sonnetteer, I either take the fact 



LIFE OF MILTON. 2?1 

sonnet was constructed, though not with rigid 
accuracy, by Sidney, Spenser, Shakspeare, 
and still more happily by Drummond, the 
peculiar object, as it Avould seem, of Milton's 
applause and imitation. By Milton this mi- 
nute poem has frequently been animated 
with a great and mighty soul. That which 

„on the credit of others, or I adopt the vague language of writers., 
who call every short poem, comprised within fourteen lines, a 
sonnet. Surrey has justly been honoured by Mr. Warton with 
the title of our first English classic: but I am not acquainted 
with one regular sonnet, which he has constructed. I am far 
from being profoundly conversant with our old English poets ; and 
therefore the reader will be the less surprised when I tell him 
that Drummond is the earliest writer of the true sonnet whom I 
can properly be said to know. One of the sonnets of this admir- 
able genius, addressed to the Nightingale, is so beautiful that I 
must be allowed to gratify myself by transcribing it. 

TO THE NIGHTINGALE. 

Sweet bird, that sing'st away the early hours 
Of winter, past or coming, void of care, 
Well pleased with delights which present are, 

Fair seasons, budding sprays, sweet-smelling flowers : 

To rocks to springs, to rills, from leafy bowers 
Thou thy Creator's goodness dost declare, 
And what dear gifts to thee he did not spare j 

A stain to human sense in guilt that lowers. 

What soul can be so sick, which by thy songs, 
Attired in sweetness, sweetly is not driven 

Quite to forget earth's turmoils, spite and wrongs, 
And lift a reverend eye and thought to heaven? 

Sweet artless songster ! thou my mind dost raise < 

To airs of spheres, — yes, and to angels' lays. 



2?2 LIFE OF MILTON. 

he wrote " when the assault was intended to 
the city/' and those which he addressed to 
Cyriac Skinner, (the grandson of the great 
lord Coke,) to Fairfax, to Vane, and to Crom- 
well are eminent for their vigour and lofti- 
ness. Some greater accuracy perhaps might 
be required in the finishing of these short 
poems; but they are conceived and executed 
in a grand and broad style. Like a small 
statue by the chisel of Lysippus or a minia- 
ture from the pencil of Angelo, they demon- 
strate that the idea of greatness may be excited 
independently of the magnitude of size. 

The distinguishing qualities of our au- 
thor's genius are generally known to be ele- 
vation and power; and he is certainly never 
more in his proper employment and station 
than when he is sporting in the tempest, and 
hovering in infinite space. Descending how- 
ever into the regions of tenderness and grace, 
he can contract the action of his giant hands 
to the braiding of a wreath, or to the fashion- 
ing of a gem. If this were not sufficiently 
attested by his I/Allegro, II Penseroso, and 
parts of his Comus and of his great Epic, we 
might rest our proof of it on the testimony of 
those little pieces which are now under our 
notice. His sonnet to the nightingale is sweet; 
that on his deceased wife is pathetic, and 



LIFE OF MILTOJST. 273 

that to Mr. Lawrence is elegant and pleas- 
ing. These short sallies of Milton's poetic 
power are not all indeed equally success- 
ful ; and a few of them may be acknow- 
ledged even to have failed. If we except 
however the eleventh, written evidently as a 
sportive struggle to bend knotty words into 
rhyme, we shall not find one of these minor 
poems unornamented with beautiful, or un- 
dignified with strong, or unelevated with 
sublime thoughts. The lines in many of 
them are careless and inharmonious ; and 
the merit of some of the finest among them 
is diminished by the injury of an inadequate 
or defective close. If the sonnet to Crom- 
well had been finished with the same spirit 
and taste with which it was begun, it would 
have been of unrivalled excellence: it would 
indeed have been a precious stone, with its 
worth infinitely enhanced by the exquisite 
sculpture on its surface of an Olympian 
Jove. 1 On the subject of this fine sonnet, it 
has been justly remarked by bishop Hurd 
that the beautiful hemistich in the ninth line 
is vitiated by an impropriety of metaphor. 

1 My meaning in this passage may be liable to mistake. The 
remark in it is applied solely to the Cromwell of the poet, and not 
to the Cromwell of history. 



274 LIFE OF MILTON. 

And Dunbar field resounds thy praises loud, 
And Worcester's laureat wreath. 

Though we have noticed in this place all 
the sonnets of Milton, it may be proper to 
mention that only ten of them were included 
in the publication of which we are now speak- 
ing, the rest having been composed at a sub- 
sequent period. Five of them indeed, viz. 
those to Fairfax, to Cromwell, to Vane, and 
to Cyriac Skinner, (who was honoured with 
two of these poetical addresses,) were with- 
drawn for a considerable period from the 
public. They were annexed by Philips to 
his life of his uncle; and, about four years 
afterwards, four of them were transcribed by 
Toland into his work on the same biogra- 
phical subject: but they were again omitted 
in some of the following editions, and seemed 
to be in danger of falling under the proscrip- 
tion of the execrable spirit of party. Fac- 
tion however has not been able to add this 
injury to the many which it has inflicted on 
us; and, in this remoter age, we are not di- 
verted by the political offence of these son- 
nets from the admiration of their poetical 
excellence. In the second of the two ad- 
dressed to Cyriac Skinner is exhibited such 
a sublime picture of the author's resignation, 
fortitude, loftiness of soul, and ardent zeal 



LIFE OF MILTON. 27 5 

for the great interests of his species as must 
necessarily conciliate our reverence and re- 
gard, even if it should fail of exciting the 
stronger feeling of our wonder. 1 " 

Of this edition of his poems Milton pre- 
sented a copy to the Bodleian library: but 
the volume being by some accident lost, 

m I may add in a note what might be considered as too 
great an interruption of my subject in the body of the work. 
Though the regular sonnet has not been a favourite with the pre- 
sent times 5 and has seen its name, without its power, usurped by 
a poem of fourteen lines in the elegiac stanza, it has been con- 
structed with eminent success by more than one of those ladies, 
whose poetic talents have formed a distinguishing feature in the 
character of our immediate age. It will be obvious that I allude 
more particularly to a few exquisite sonnets from the pen of Mrs. 
Charlotte Smith, and to a greater number of them from that of 
Miss Seward, the merit of which has been acknowledged and 
ratified by the taste of an applauding public. But I wish to ex- 
plain that I allude also to another female Muse, whose name is 
yet unknown to the world, who can no longer warble her melo- 
dies upon earth, and who is now in that place to which human 
praise in its highest elevation can never ascend. When the reader 
has perused the following sonnet, chosen from others in my pos- 
session solely for the melancholy, I had almost said the prophetic 
peculiarity of its subject, let him know that the writer of it was 
only in the middle of her twelfth year, and that, when she had 
just completed her fourteenth, she closed a life as amiable for 
piety and sweetness as it was remarkable for genius. Let him 
know likewise that this sonnet, which was once read by me with 
exquisite delight, not up mingled perhaps with pride, is now 
transcribed by me with tears, which can never cease to flow 
when the idea obtrudes itself of the daughter w r hom I lately had, 
and have no more. 



276 LIFE OF MILTON. 

John Rouse," the principal librarian, wrote 
to solicit a repetition of the gift. The re- 
quest was of too flattering a nature to be 
refused ; and to the book, which he sent in 
compliance with it, the author gave addi- 
tional value by inscribing its first page with 
a Latin ode; a composition entitled to con- 
siderable though not to unqualified praise. 
Its irregularity of measure, for which any 
classical authority, even among the choruses 
of the Greek dramatists, would be vainly 
sought, must certainly be admitted in dimi- 

ON A BLIGHTED ROSE-BUD. 

Scarce had thy velvet lips imbibed the dew, 

And Nature hail'd thee infant queen of May; 

Scarce saw thine opening bloom the sun's broad ray, 
And to the air its tender fragrance threw, 
When the north wind enamour'd of thee grew; 

And by his cold, rude kiss thy charms decay: 
Now droops thy head, now fades thy blushing hue — 

No more the queen of flowers, no longer gay. 
So blooms a maid, her guardians — health and joy — 

Her mind array'd in innocency's vest — 
When suddenly, impatient to destroy, 

Death clasps the virgin to his iron breast. 
She fades — the parent, sister, friend, deplore 
The charms and budding virtues now no more! 

Nov. 27, isoo. Caroline Symmons. 

n John Rouse or Russe, A. M. Fellow of Oriel College, Ox- 
ford, was elected chief librarian of the Bodleian may Q, 1620. 
He died in April 1052. Warton. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 277 

nution of its merit. But its diction is pure 
and, equally with its matter, eminently poetic. 
As it exhibits the ° last effort of Milton's Ro- 
man muse, and has not perhaps experienced 
sufficient attention, the reader will pardon me 
for transcribing some of its stanzas, as I can 
gratify him, at the same time, with a transla- 
tion of them by the elegant pen of my friend 
Francis Wrangham. 

STROPHE I. 

Gemelle cultu simplici gauclens liber, 

Fronte licet gemina, 

Munditieque nitens non operosaj 

Quem manus attulit 

Juvenilis olim, 

Sedula tamen haud nimii poetaej 

Dum vagus Ausonias nunc per umbras, 

Nunc Britannxca per vireta lusit, 

Insons populi, barbitoque devius 

Indulsit patrio ; mox itidem pectine Daunio 

Longinquum intonuit melos 

Vicinis, et humum vix tetigit pede. 

Go, Book, with one informing mind 

Living beneath a twofold face : p 

And, studious of no alien grace, 
Go plain, and speak what once the youth design'dj 

° The few verses which he wrote under Cromwell's picture, 
and addressed to Christina, form too slight an exception in this 
instance to be worthy of notice. 

p This volume had a double title-page, one prefixed to the 
Latin and one to the English poems. 



278 LIFE OF MILTON. 

While 'mid Ausonia's classic shade 

Reclined, or in some native glade, 

Yet guiltless of his country's ire, 

He struck on Rome's or Albion's lyre : 
Or roused the thunder of the Tuscan chord, 
And, spurning earth's low tracts, through fields empyreal 
soar'd. 



STROPHE II. 

Modo quis deus, aut editus deo, 

Pristinam gentis miseratus indolem, 

(Si satis noxas luimus priores, 

Mollique luxu degener otium,) 

Tollat nefandos civium tumultus, 

Almaqae revocet studia sanctusj 

Et relegatas sine sede Musas 

Jam pene totis finibus Angligenum j 

Immundasque volucres, 

Unguibus imminentes, 

Figat Apollinea pbaretra, 

Phineamque abigat pestem procul amne Pegaseo? 

Would but some heavenly power, 

In pity of our prostrate fame, 

(If sorrow yet hath purged our name 
And woe's atoning pang hath had rts hour,) 

Quell the fierce crowd's unhallowed roar, 

And back to their loved haunts restore 

The banish'd Nine, who drooping roam 

Without a comforter or home; 
Wing his keen shaft against the noisome race, 
And far from Delphi's stream the harpy mischief chase. 

ANTISTROPHE. 

Quin tu, libelle, nuntii licet mala 

Fide vel oscitantia 

Semel erraveris agmine fratrum, 



LIFE OF MILTON. 2J9 

Seii qnis te teneat specus, 

Seu qua te latebr.i, forsan unde vili 

Callo tereris institoris insulsij 

Laetare felix: en iterum tibi 

Spes nova fiilgetj posse profundam 

Fugere Lethen, vehique superam 

In Jovis aulam reniige penna. 

But thou rejoice, dear book ; 

Though late purloin'd by pilfering hand, 

Or wandering from thy brother-band, 
Thou lurkest now in some inglorious nook : 

Jn some vile den thy honours torn, 

Or by some palm mechanic worn 5 

Rejoice! for lo! new hopes arise, 

That thou again may'st view the skies 5 
From Lethe's pool oblivious burst to day, 
And win on " sail-broad vans" to highest heaven thy way. 



ANTISTROPHE. 

Ergo tu visere lucos 

Musarum ibis amoenos; 

Diamque Phoebi rursus ibis in domum, 

Oxonia quam valle colit, 

Delo posthabita 

Bifidoque Parnassi jugo : 

Ibis honestus, 

Postquam egregiam tu quoque sortem 

Nactus abis, dextri prece sollicitatus amici. 

Illic legeris inter alta nomina 

Auctorum, Graiae simul et Latinae 

Antiqua gentis lumina et verum decus. 

Tis thine to hail the groves, 

Her vale's green charms where Oxford spreads . 

Thine her fair domes and velvet meads, 
Which more than his own Delos Phoebus loves,, 



280 LIFE OF MILTON. 

Than Pindus more : and thine, proud choice ! 
(Since thou by friendship's partial voice 
Art call'd to join the immortal band,) 
'Mid many an honour'd bard to stand; 
Bards of old Greece and conquering Rome the pride, 
Whose names shall float for aye on time's o'erwhelming tide, 

EPODOS. 

Vos, tandem, haud vacui mei labores, 

Quicquid hoc sterile fudit ingenium, 

Jam sero placidam sperare jubeo 

Perfunctam invidia requiem sedesque beatas, 

Quas bonus Hermes 

Et tutela dabit solers Roiisi ; 

Quo neque lingua procax vulgi penetrabit, atque longe 

Turba legentum prava facesset: 

At ultimi nepotes 

Et cordatior aetas 

Judicia rebus aequiora forsitan 

Adhibebit, integro sinu. 

Turn, livore sepulto, 

Si quid meremur sana posteritas sciet, 

Rousio favente. 

And ye my other toils, 

Not toil'd in vain — some distant day 

From envy's fang shall speed your way, 
Where Rouse protects and favouring Hermes smiles: 

There nor the rabble shall revile, 

Nor factious critics pour their bile ; 

But, hoarded to a happier age, 

A purer race shall scan the page; 
With heart unwarp'd your humble worth regard, 
Trample on Spleen's wan corse, and bless the patriot-bard. 

Mr. Warton has favoured us with only i 
one critical remark on any part of the struc- 



LIFE OF MILTON. ^81 

ture of this ode. On the seventy-eighth line 
" Et tutela dabit solers Roiisi," the critic ob- 
serves, " If he meant this verse for an hen- 
decasyllable, there is a false quantity in so- 
lers. The first syllable is notoriously long." 
This single observation, which would lead us 
to suspect that Mr. Warton's q acquaintance 
with the Greek and Roman metres was not 
very profound, has induced me to offer, in 
a note, r a more extensive piece of criticism 
on this wild and lawless composition. 

i Mr.Warton's observations, on our author's Latin prose com- 
position, discover the critic to be ill qualified for the office which 
he has undertaken, and his dogmatic censure of all Milton's prose 
writings, (with a gracious exception indeed in favour of the 
/f Tractate on Education" and the " Areopagitica,") betrays the 
want of taste in nearly as great a degree as it does the predo- 
minancy of prejudice. Of the opinions which, in the circle of 
his college -admirers and elated by partial applause, Mr. W. has 
thus ventured to hazard, I will not abuse the reader's or my own 
time by condescending to take any further notice. They are to 
be found p. 5J1 of the ed. of Milton's Juvenile Poems. 

r When he constructed this ode to Rouse, which is now a wild 
chaos of verses and no verses heaped together confusedly and 
licentiously, Milton must be regarded as imprudent for not having 
taken any one model of acknowledged authority, by a perfect 
assimilation to which, in the construction and the combination 
of his metres, he might have secured himself from error and re- 
prehension. Inattentive or lawless he must certainly be deemed, 
either for not noticing or for not following the rule of systema- 
tizing, which the moderation of the Latin poets chose to affect, 
rather than to indulge in that inexhaustible variety, that rapid 



282 LIFE OF MILTON. 

In the year in which this was written, 



interchange of numbers, which enchants and astonishes in the 
tragic solemnity of the chorus of the Grecian Muse, or in the wild 
roll of her dithyrambic. This preference of a system may be 
observed amongst all, even the latest of the Roman poets; though 
exceptions to it will be found in two or three choruses m Seneca s 
plays (Agam. 59O. 810. GEdip. 403), which at the same time 
exhibit transgressions of every rule of metre and of rhythm. To 
disapprove then of the general plan and construction of this 
ode is only to admit that, in matters of this nature, innovation 
is dangerous and to be avoided: for, in compositions in the clas- 
sical languages, what is without precedent may be contrary to 
principle; and in every department of knowledge the vague sur- 
mises of probability, which are doubtful, must not be balanced 
against the conclusions of necessity, which are certain. Next in 
order to be regarded is the execution of the ode, which need not 
have followed the licentiousness of the plan; and ic would have 
been more becoming in our poet to adhere to authority in the 
former, than it was censurable to depart from it in the latter; for 
to deviate from authority in the former was to produce new fabrics 
of verse, and thus to indulge in a violence of innovation at which 
sound judgment must necessarily revolt. It was to be expected 
therefore that Milton would fortify each of his lines with example, 
or, in defect of example, would at least advance for his deed the 
plea of reason, and would attempt to conciliate criticism with the 
effect of harmony: but to neither of these dictates of prudence 
has he invariably attended. For some of his verses individual 
example will be sought for in vain, while in others, not strictly 
conformable to those models which they most nearly resemble, 
the less severe and fastidious will admit the principle of con- 
struction not to be wholly contrary to the genius of the Latin 
language, and will acknowledge that the rhythm distinguishes 
them from the asperity of their neighbours. With lines of this 
description may be classed the following : 



LIFE OF MILTON. 283 

(1646,) the wife of Milton produced her first 

Quaestorque gaza^ nobilioris. 
Optat peculi, numeroque justo. 
Sibi pollicitum queritur abesse. 
iEternorum operura custos fidelis. 
Et tatela dabit solers Roiisi. 

(The two last verses are not Phalaecians, whatever Milton may- 
call them) 

Auctorum Graiae simul ac Latinae, 

Phioeamque abigat pestem procul amne Pegaseo. 

Quo neque lingua procax vulgi penetrabit atque ionge. 

The rive last lines are too cumbrous with spondees, but they 
are constructed after the manner of Pindar, the most beautiful 
and the most frequent of whose verses are formed by prefixing 
or postfixing trochaics to dactylics — e. g. 

Eowfyoa ^ccXxoccpav o k7oj Qavovlu/v. 

So Seneca — 

Ut quondam Herculea cecidit pharetra. 
Motam barbaricis equitum catervis. 

These lines, though not very strictly formed on any model and 
indefensible by example, may be admitted as not deficient in 
rhythm : but others are to be found in this composition of Mil- 
ton's not only unprotected by the strong bulwark of authority, 
but unrecommended also by the wily influence of harmony j 
monsters, such as Seneca, or whoever was the author of CEdipus 
and Agamemnon, scarcely ever begot, or Georgius FabriciuS 
christened. To reject disdainfully such specimens as are con-* 
tained in the following list requires not the superbum aurium 
•udicium. King Midas would have disapproved of them j and we 
may decide dogmatically, and may animadvert severely, without 
caution and without delicacy, on a fact which is so obvious and 
on uncouthness which is so barbarous. 



284 LIFE OF MILTON. 

Child,' a daughter, baptized by the name of 

Insons populi, barbitoque devius. 
Modo quis Deus, aut editus Deo. 
Pristinam gentis miseratus indolem. 
Orbi notus per immensos. 
Almaque revocet studia sanctus. 
Fugere Lethen, vehique superam. 
Sedula tamen haud nimii poetae. 
Callo tereris institoris insulsi. 
Quis te, parve liber, quis te fratribus. 
Munditieque nitens non operosa. 
Quicquid hoc sterile fudit ingenium. 
Jam serb placidam sperare jubeo. 
Dum vagus Ausonias nunc per umbras. 

As Antispastics, (a measure though difficult and obscure, yet 
not lawless and licentious,) are in use only among the Greeks, 
and were rejected by the Latins, as unpleasant to their ears and 
repugnant to their accent, it would be in vain to justify the 
preceding lines by referring them to that metre, to which they 
may perhaps bear some shadowy resemblance : with any degree 
of resemblance, they could not be permitted to avail themselves 
of such far-fetched and foreign authority — citra mare nati. 

Of the remaining lines of this ode, it will be sufficient to say 
that they are good and that most of them are well-known and 
well authorized, without entering into a tedious detail of the 
names of dactylics, iambics, trochaics, asclepiadeans, &c. &c. 
The dactylic, Clarus Erectheides, would sound fuller and better 
if the dipththong ei were resolved puncto dialyseos. Dawes has 
well observed that these words Tvfeitirtf, Argsifys, &c. never occur 
in Homer where they must be trisyllables, but only where they 
may be quadrisyllables. Add to this the words of Eustathius not 
far from the beginning of his HxgsxZoXai sis rrjv 'Opjca itoiv)<nv. 
'Ot AhXsis tfowdw b *£i$ &<j>0o'yyw; «x dTtoZAXkeriy, aXX* 

8 July 29. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 285 

Anne, who was lame either from her birth, 
or in consequence of some accident in her 
early infancy. In the following year, in 
which our author's father died, his allies, the 
Powells, returned to their own mansion, and 
his house, being once more resigned to lite- 
rature, " looked again/' to use his nephew's 
expression, " like a house of the * Muses." 
In this house however, ,in which his second 
child, Mary, was born, u he did not continue 
long; x exchanging it for one of smaller di- 
mensions in High Holborn, the back part 
of which opened into Lincoln's Inn Fields. 

tLpvaveaa jxcvij ^iccfidirsi, w$ ev ?w 'Alpiitys, 'Aiyiifys Apyiwc. 
Pindar sometimes uses the dialysis, and sometimes not. 

Ts^v guars <? Arpsifiouo'i vq&toy. 

Aovtss OixAsjJa yvyaixa,. 

In the scolion to Harmodius and Aristogeiion. 
Tvfa'ifyv rs {cSAoV Ajopjo^ct — 
Si quid meremur sana posteritas sctet 

I cannot help admiring that Seneca should so studiously affect 
an anapaest in the fifth place of a senarius, to the almost entire 
exclusion of a tribrach and an iambus. 

1 Philips, xxvii. u October 25, 1648. 

x The date of this change of residence is not precisely ascer- 
tained. It is said to have been soon after the march of the 
army, in April 1647, under Fairfax and Cromwell to suppress 
the insurrection, excited in the city by Massey and Brown. 
Milton's official appointment took place in l64p, soon after the 
establishment of the Council of State. He occupied his house, 
therefore, in High Holborn. about two years. 



286 LIFE OF MILTON. 

His next removal of residence was occa- 
sioned by his acceptance of the office of 
Latin secretary, which rendered a situation 
nearer to Whitehall an object of convenience 
to him. 

As those writings of Milton, which will 
soon occur to our notice, are intimately con- 
nected with the great political transactions 
of his time, it will be necessary to throw a 
cursory view upon these interesting events, 
before we proceed again in the prosecution 
of our more immediate subject. 

The victory at Naseby, gained on the 
14th of June 1045 by the army under Fair- 
fax and Cromwell, may be considered as 
having terminated the war between the Par- 
liament and Charles, a civil war honourably 
distinguished from every other by the ge- 
neral benignity of its spirit, and the admir- 
able moderation of the victor. From the mo- 
ment of this defeat the unhappy Monarch 
was, in truth, in the possession of his enemies; 
and he passed the few months, which inter- 
vened before his surrender to the Scots, in a 
species of captivity at Oxford. 

In the April of the following year, he fled to 
the army of the Scots before Newark, under 
the command of the earl of Leven, by whom 
he was detained as a prisoner, and, in no 



LIFE OF MILTON. 287 

long time, delivered to the commissioners of 
the Parliament. By them he was y conducted 
to Holmby, or Holdenby-house, in North- 
amptonshire; where he remained, in easy if 
not in honourable confinement, till he was 
seized in the following June, by the army; 
and after some removals was settled by them, 
in a state of delusive liberty and splendour, 
at Hampton-Court. 

At this crisis of his fate he was presented 
with an opportunity of recovering his fallen 
fortunes, and replacing himself on the throne. 
The Presbyterians, now in the fulness of their 
power, with the Parliament, the city of Lon- 
don and the Scots at their command, thought 
it no longer necessary to continue that dis- 
guise which had hitherto imperfectly con- 
cealed their principles from the world. They 
openly avowed themselves the enemies of 
toleration; and their victorious army, com- 
posed of Independents and various secta- 
rists, began to discover that they had la- 
vished their blood only to substitute one ty- 
rann}^ for another, and had conquered merely 
for their own ruin. In this exigence they 
preferred petitions and remonstrances to the 
Parliament, and, on the failure of these le- 
gal weapons, under the impulse of resent- 

v Feb. 6., 1646-7. 



288 LIFE OF MILTOX. 

ment and despair, they resorted to violence, 
and destroyed the presbyterian power, the 
government, and themselves. They became 
indeed the instruments of their superior of- 
ficers; and were eventually made the engine 
of Cromwell, by whom they with the nation 
were despoiled of all their great political ob- 
jects; but were gratified with their favourite 
toleration in its most unlimited extent. 

These events however, though just at 
hand, were not as yet disclosed or even 
foreseen; and Ireton and Cromwell, uncer- 
tain of the result of their contest with the 
Presbyterians, made an offer to Charles, while 
he was in their power at Hampton-Court, to 
reinstate him in his royalties on certain con- 
ditions, for which they stipulated in behalf of 
themselves and of their friends. But the in- 
fatuated prince, under the influence of weak 
or interested advisers, and elated by a strange 
opinion of his own essential importance z amid 
this violent conflict of parties, rejected the 
proffers of his fortune ; and even offended 
those, by whom they were made, with his 

z He was persuaded, he said, that it was in his power to tarn 
the scale, and that the party must sink which he abandoned} 
and he told those, who brought to him the offers of the army, 
" I shall see you glad ere long to accept more equal terms. You 
cannot be without me: you will fall to ruin, if I do not sustain 

VOU," &C. &C RUSHWOKTB. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 289 

haughtiness, his fluctuation and his duplicity. 
When the}' found, by their discovery of his 
secret correspondence with the queen, that no 
reliance was to be placed on his good faith, 
Ireton and Cromwell, seem to have deter- 
mined on his destruction; and, withdrawing 
their protection, they compelled him, for his 
immediate preservation, to fly from Hamp- 
ton-Court in quest of another asylum. This 
he sought, but, instead of it, he unfortu- 
nately found a much more certain and rigor- 
ous prison in the Isle of Wight; where he 
experienced a close confinement for nearly 
a twelvemonth in Carisbrooke Castle. a 

Even here however fortune seemed again 
disposed to redress her former wrongs to 
him, and to give him back, by treaty, a 
large part at least of what she had ravished 
from him by arms. But his fatal obstinacy 
finally repulsed her; and the persuasion, from 
which all his past experience could not re- 
claim him, of the consequence of a dethroned 
and captive king, induced him to throw away 
the last mean of safety. The difficulties 
which he interposed protracting the nego- 
tiation between him and the Parliament, the 
army gained time to return from their victo- 



Commanded by Col. Hammond. 

U 



290 LIFE OF MILTON. 

rious expedition against the Scots, and to 
concert their measures against their com- 
mon enemies, the Presbyterians and himself. 
Having possessed themselves of the Parlia- 
ment by force, they once more seize upon 
the Monarch, and, insulting him with the 
mockery of a legal trial under the pretended 
authority of an unrepresented people, they 
lead him to suffer on the scaffolcl. b In pro- 
nouncing the illegality of this whole proceed- 
ing the voice of the dispassionate and the in- 
telligent must necessarily be unanimous; and 
the question will not be found to include any 
part of that respecting the guilt of Charles, 
or the right of the nation to make him re- 
sponsible with his life, for the abuse of his 
delegated sceptre. He fell, as it must be 
obvious, not by the judicial, but by the mi- 
litary sword; and, though Bradshaw pro- 
nounced the sentence, the fanatic army, under 
the guidance of Ireton and Cromwell, were 
in truth the authors of his death. 

Abhorrent, as I necessarily must be, from 
this deed of sanguinary violence, I cannot 
consent to involve, in one sweep of condem- 
nation, all those who were its perpetrators. 
While the greater number of them were wild 

u On the 30th of January, 1648^9- 



LIFE OF MILTON". 2$! 

enthusiasts, who conceived that they were 
acting in obedience to the will of God by 
removing the intolerant supporter of prelacy, 
and the violator also, as they imagined, of 
the obligation of the sovereign to the people, 
a few of them, if not comprehensive politi- 
cians, were honest patriots, who fancied that, 
by the trial and the execution of a guilty king, 
the}' could establish a commonwealth on the 
basis of equal right and of general advan- 
tage. Among these, who certainly formed a 
small minority, I must reckon Ireton, Brad- 
shaw and Ludlow, men who were true to 
their professed principles, and who evidently 
acted on their views of the public good, er- 
roneous as we know them to have been. 
On Bradshaw I shall produce in its proper 
place an eloquent and, in many respects, a 
just eulogy from the pen of Milton. 

During the whole of this distressful and 
opprobrious transaction, our author had re- 
mained an inactive spectator of the public 
scene, and had in no way been accessory 
to the fate of Charles. " c Neither did I 

c Neque de jure regio quicquam a me scriptum est, donee 
Rex, hostis a senatu judicatus belloque victus, causam captivns 
apud judices diceret, capitisque damnatus est. Tum verb tan- 
dem, cum Presbyteriani quidam ministri, Carolo prius infes- 
tissimi, nunc Independentium partes suis anteferri, et in senatu 
plus posse indignantes, Parliamenti sententiae de Rege latge (non 



2.92 LITE OF MILTON 

write any thing/' as be declares at a period 
when the prosperity of his party made it 
unnecessary for him to suppress the truth, 
" respecting the regal jurisdiction, till the 
King, proclaimed an enemy by the senate 
and overcome in arms, was brought captive 
to his trial and condemned to suffer death. 
When indeed some of the presbyterian lead- 
ers, lately the most inveterately hostile to 
Charles, but now irritated by the preva- 
lence of the Independents in the nation and 
the senate and stung with resentment not 
of the fact, but of their own want of power 
to commit it, exclaimed against the sen- 
tence of the Parliament upon the King, 
and raised w T hat commotions they could by 
daring to assert that the doctrine of the 
protestant divines and of all the reformed 
churches was strong in reprobation of this 

facto irati, sed quod ipsorum factio non fecisset) reclamitarent, 
et, quantum in ipsis erat, tumultuarentur, ausi affirmare Protes- 
tantium doctrinara, omnesque ecclesias reformatas ab ejusmodi in 
reges atroci sententia abhorrere, ratus falsitati tarn aperta? palam 
eundum obviam esse., ne turn quidem de Carolo quicquam scripsi 
aut suasi, sed quid in genere contni tyrannos liceret, adductis 
haud paucis summorum theologorum testimoniis, ostendi; et 
insignem hominum, meliora profitentium, sive ignorantiam sive 
impudentiam, prope concionabundus incessi. Liber iste non nisi 
post mortem Regis prodiit, ad componendos potius hominum 
animos factus, quam ad statuenduum de Carolo quicquam., quod 
non mei sed magistratuum intererat, et peractum jam turn erat. 
"Def. secun. P. W. v. 234. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 2Q3 

severity to kings, then at length I con- 
ceived it to be my duty publicly to oppose 
so much obvious and palpable falsehood. 
Neither did I then direct my argument or 
persuasion personally against Charles, but 
by the testimony of many of the most emi- 
nent divines I proved what course of con- 
duct might lawfully be observed towards 
tyrants in general; and, with the zeal almost 
of a preacher, 1 attacked the strange igno- 
rance or the wonderful impudence of these 
men who had lately amused us with the 
promises of better things. This work was 
not published till after the death of the King; 
and was written rather to tranquillize the 
minds of men than to discuss any part of 
the question respecting Charles, a question, 
the decision of which belonged to the magis- 
trate and not to me, and which had now re- 
ceived its final determination." 

The work, of which Milton speaks in this 
passage, was published in February 16*48-9 
with the title of " The Tenure of King's and 
Magistrates ; proving that it is lawful, and hath 
been held so through all ages, for any, who 
have the power, to call to account a tyrant or 
wicked king; and, after due conviction, to 
depose and put him to death, if the ordinary 
magistrate have neglected or denied to do it." 



294 LIFE OF MILTON. 

Respecting the origin and object of the 
regal and magisterial function there cannot 
be a dissentient opinion among the enlight- 
ened and the reflecting. It would be idle to 
affirm that this monarch inherited his scep- 
tre from his ancestors, or that another ob- 
tained his by conquest, or that in no in- 
stance now before our eves has the voice of 
the people seated its favourite on the throne. 
No other conceivable source of political 
power can be pretended than the general will 
operating, by exertion or in acquiescence, 
for the general order and advantage. 

When God made man weak and indi- 
gent, and gave him propensities to coalesce 
for the purpose of supplying his individual 
impotence by the force of combination, 
God was in fact the institutor of human so- 
ciety; and when he permitted man, whom he 
had created fallible, to lapse into error and 
thus rendered the controll of private interest 
and passion requisite for the common secu- 
rity, the same Almighty Being was in truth 
the founder of human government. Poli- 
tical institution therefore, as well as social 
union, must be referred to the Creator as to 
its first father; and the pure despotism of 
Persia or of imperial Rome may as unques- 
tionably assert its claim to this heavenly pedi- 



LIFE OF MILTON. 295 

gree as the pure democracy of Athens or 
the complex artifice of the constitution of 
Britain. " c The powers that be are ordained 
of God;" and the magistrate may justly be 
regarded as the minister of that Supreme 
Power to whose permission the necessity of 
his existence must ultimately be referred. 
But while God must thus be admitted as the 
first parent of government in the abstract, 
he has evidently submitted the adjustment 
of its particular modes to the reason and the 
will of man. By this intellectual and moral 
agent the requisite controll may be enlarged 
or restrained, may be confined to the hands 
of one, or distributed among those of many 
according to the determination of his wants, 
his habits, or his inclination ; and, on the 
principle that human guilt is punishable by 
human justice, the abuser of this confided 
controll must be amenable to the judgment 
of those from whose authority and for whose 
benefit he has received it. 

To this point, then, we cannot well re- 
fuse our concurrence to Milton; but to the 
next step it will be hazardous to accom- 
pany him. If the right to punish these ele- 
vated delinquents be invariably annexed to 

c Rom. xiii. 1. 



296 LIFE OF MILTON. 

the possession of the power, a fearful open- 
ing will be left for mischief; and the sword, 
directed by private passion or perhaps by 
individual caprice, may injure the interests 
of thousands while it strikes a criminal ma- 
gistrate. There may indeed be extreme 
cases in which nature, rising against op- 
pression, will vindicate the blow inflicted by 
one or by the few. But the occurrence of 
these cases must necessarily be so rare, and 
the evil of the proposed remedy is so incon- 
trovertibly great, that a christian moralist 
cannot hesitate to prohibit the execution of 
the most evident public justice by any less 
power than that of the public will. The 
wisdom of the English constitution is in this 
instance especially admirable. Making, un- 
der the influence of the most cogent reasons, 
the person of the first magistrate intangible 
and sacred and yet acknowledging the in- 
dissoluble union of responsibility with trust, 
it compels this inviolable officer to act with 
the agency of others, and to these indispen- 
sible instruments it attaches the responsibi- 
lity of the great executive office. 

With the conscious security of a patri- 
archal father at the head of his extended 
familv, the Sovereign is thus invited to the 
indulgence of paternal benevolence, while 



LIFE OF MILTON. 297 

the interests of the community are as effec- 
tually secured as if the sword, in perpetual 
and delicate suspense over his head, were 
ready to fall on him for every abuse of his 
delegated authority. But some of the finer 
lineaments of the English constitution were 
not ascertained in the time of Milton; and 
his ideas of liberty were formed principally 
in the school of Greece, where the hand 
which slew a tyrant was consecrated ; and 
where, from the natural result of their trem- 
bling insecurity, these usurpers of the public 
rights were peculiarly bloody and ferocious. 
The treatise, which we are noticing, is 
full of strong argument and weighty sense. 
In support of the lawfulness of tyrannicide, 
the writer adduces some examples from the 
Hebrew scriptures; and is willing to infer 
that the especial commission of unerring 
wisdom and justice, which certainly hallows 
the deed immediately in question, commu- 
nicates the covering of its sanction to deeds 
precisely the same in kind, motive, and ef- 
fect. From the sacred writings of the chris- 
tians he can cite only two or three passages, 
which prove nothing more than that the 
blessed Jesus did not assign to monarchs 
all the attributes which were given to them 
by the adulation of the world, or feel for 



298 LIFE OF MILTON. 

wicked sovereigns more respect than he felt 
for wicked men. 

The opinions of christian divines/ which 
are subsequently produced, make more di- 
rectly and fully for the author's purpose. 
According to the judgment of these learned 
and pious men, " kings are under the laws 
as well as their subjects, and regal guilt, 
from its greater consequences, ought to be 
corrected with severer infliction :'' " kings 
have their authority from the people, who 
may upon occasion reassume it:" — " kings 
who endeavour to subvert religion, and use 
their power to the injury of those for whose 
benefit it was entrusted to them, break the 
ties between them and their people, and re- 
lease the latter from their allegiance ;" — and, 
lastly, " kings or rulers, who become blas- 
phemers of God, oppressors and murderers 
of their subjects, ought not to be accounted 
kings or lawful magistrates, but ought, as 
private men, to be examined, accused, con- 
demned and punished." 

These authorities unquestionably demon- 
strate that the responsibility of kings to a 
human tribunal is a doctrine which has not 

d The divines, whose opinions are cited by Milton on this 
occasion, are Luther, Zwinglius, Calvin, Bucer, Peter Martyr, 
Paraeus, Gilby, Christopher Goodman, and the Scotch reformers^ 
with the whole body of the Scotch clergy. 



LIFE OF MILTON. £99 

uniformly been considered as incompatible 
with christian theology : but their support 
cannot be extended to the full assertion in 
the title of this piece, " that it is lawful for any 
who have the power to call to account a tyrant;" 
&c. though this assertion be a little qualified 
by the subsequent words, " and after due con- 
viction to depose and put him to death/' 

In the course of this work the Presbyte- 
rians obtain much of the author's notice ; 
and their conduct is exposed by him with 
the severity which it deserved. It was dif- 
ficult indeed to animadvert too strongly 
upon the inconsistency of men who, after 
resisting the authority of their sovereign, 
after making him the aim of their devout 
execrations from the pulpit and of their ar- 
tillery in the field, after " hunting and pur- 
suing him," to use the author's own words, 
" round about the kingdom with fire and 
sword;" after dethroning, seizing, and im- 
prisoning him, now clamoured against the 
natural result of their own actions, and, pre- 
tending conscience and the covenant, felt 
extreme tenderness for the inviolability and 
sacredness of the kingly person, which they 
had endangered by their war and had vio- 
lated with their chains. It would have 
been well for them if they had attended to 



300 LIFE OF MILTON. 

the salutary warning given to them by our 
author, and, withholding their confidence 
from men exasperated beyond the just hope 
of a reconciliation, had forborne to coalesce 
with the royalists, by whom they were soon 
to be crushed in one common ruin with their 
immediate enemies the Independents. 

The next work, which came in rapid suc- 
cession from the pen of Milton, was, " Ob- 
servations upon the Articles of Peace, which 
the earl of Ormond had concluded at Kil- 
kenny, on the 17th of Jan. 1648-9, in the 
king's name and by his authority, with the 
popish Irish Rebels, &c. &c." 

From its imputed connexion with the re- 
bellionof the catholics in Ireland, the royal 
cause had contracted remarkable unpopu- 
larity. This insurrection, which evinced the 
power of long-continued oppression to de- 
base and unhumanize man, was so deeply 
stained with blood, and was distinguished 
by features of such peculiar ferocity as to 
strike not England alone, but all civilized 
and christian Europe with horror and con- 
sternation. An insurrection which, in its first 
fury, had massacred, (as has been computed, 
though probably with considerable exaggera- 
tion,) nearly 200,000 persons, defenceless and 
unsuspicious of danger; an insurrection, in 



LIFE OF MILTON. . 301 

which neither the tenderness of sex, nor the 
weakness of commencing or of declining life 
had prevailed on pity to- suspend the stroke 
of murder; an insurrection, in which the 
mother and the infant at her breast had fre- 
quently been confounded in each others 
blood, and even the living womb had been 
ripped up to intercept the hope of breathing- 
existence; an insurrection, in short, which 
had acknowledged no social tie, which had 
exhausted torture and insult to inflame the 
agonies of death, which in some instances 
had attempted to gratify its fiend-like re- 
venge, by destroying with one wound both 
the body and the soul — could not certainly 
be contemplated without horror, or be em- 
braced without the deepest contamination. 

With the massacre itself no participation 
of the King's could be pretended by the har- 
diest malice of his enemies: but it would per- 
haps exceed the power of his most bigoted 
friends to clear him from the charge of be- 
ing accessory to the revolt, of which the 
massacre was the terrible, but not necessary 
or foreseen consequence. The feeling of a 
common cause against the increasing power 
of the Parliament, and the persuasion of 
a common religion had undoubtedly pre- 
vailed upon the Queen to lend her sanction, 



302 LIFE OF MILTON. 

in which the King's was implied, to the 
projected rising of the papists, whose army 
called itself her's, and whose leaders every 
where professed to act under the royal au- 
thority, and loyally avowed their support of 
the throne. We can easily admit that the 
kings commission, pretended by O'Neale, 
was a forgery of that detestable ruffian's: but 
the papers, produced after the restoration by 
his associate, the marquis of Antrim, among 
which was a letter in the King's own hand 
authorizing him to take up arms, cannot fail 
to convince the most resolute infidelity that 
the court, not aware of the weakness and 
the mischief of such assistance, had solicited 
aid from the co-operation of the Irish chiefs. 
The subsequent excesses of these barbarian 
bigots made the strongest disavowal of any 
connexion with them, on the part of their 
royal ally, a measure of the most obvious ex- 
pediency: but the conduct of Charles, when, 
within the space of three years and at a crisis 
not unfavourable to his fortunes, he gave to 
the earl of Glamorgan full powers to treat 
with these murderers, and to grant not merely 
pardon, but honours and triumph to their 
crimes, abundantly demonstrates that loy- 
alty with " hands thicker than themselves 
with brother's blood." was more acceptable 



LIFE OF MILTON. 303 

to him than resistance with the most specious 
and alluring smile of patriotism on its cheek. 
The peace concluded in his name with 
these insurgents by the earl of Ormond, on 
the articles of which Milton now animad- 
verts, was susceptible of more palliation, as 
it was made under circumstances of greater 
pressure and when the royal cause was re- 
duced to the most desperate extremity. In 
either case however he must be a stern mo- 
ralist, and ignorant of the just demand of 
human weakness, who will not pause before 
he condemns a monarch, in the same situa- 
tion with Charles, for refusing to offer his 
private interests at the shrine of public virtue, 
and to reject the promises of personal good 
from a regard to the welfare or from sym- 
pathy with the feeling of an alienated and 
hostile nation. But let this point be deter- 
mined as it may, one of the principal causes 
of the King's ruin was his supposed confe- 
deration with the Irish catholics; and the 
treaty made with them under his authority 
by Ormond, at the time of which we are 
speaking, was sufficient to confirm the pub- 
lic prepossession on the subject and to give 
the tone of truth to republican and puritan 
invective. 

The opportunity was too favourable to 



304 LIJFE OF MILTON. 

be neglected by Milton; and he found it 
not difficult to be severe on the articles of 
a peace which, completely abandoning the 
English and the protestant causes in Ireland, 
permitted their enemies to exult in the suc- 
cessful consequences of their sanguinary re- 
venge. The conduct indeed of the Royalists 
in this instance, and of their new allies, the 
Presbyterians, one of whose official papers, 
called " A Representation of the Presbytery 
at Belfast," was included in Milton's pre- 
sent strictures, very evidently discovered to 
what lengths in dereliction of principle, and 
how far from any sight of the public-good 
men could be hurried by the irritation of pri- 
vate motives and the domineering influence 
of party rage. 

When he had concluded this attack on 
the united enemies, as he was inclined to 
deem them, of his country, Milton reverted 
to the more quiet occupations of literature, 
and e finished, as he tells us, four books of 



e His rebus confectis, cum jam abimde otii existimarem mihi 
futurum, ad historiam gentis, ab ultima origine repetitam ad haec 
usque tempora, si possem, perpetuo filo deducendam me convert i. 
Quatuor sane libros absolveram, cum ecce nihil tale co^itantem 

o 

me, Caroli regno in rempublicam redacto, Concilium Status, 
quod dicitur, turn primum authoritate parliament* constitutum, 



LIFE OF MILTON". 305 

that great historical work, which he intended 
to consecrate to the honour of his native 
land. 

Of this work, in which it was the writer's 
purpose to trace the entire history of Eng- 
land from its first dark source in the regions 
of fable to its influx into his own times, 
only six books were completed. The four 
first of these conduct the narrative to the 
union of the Heptarchy under Egbert; and 
the two last, written in his next pause from 
controversial asperity when he had crushed 
the interfering insolence of Morus, bring 
it no lower than to the battle of Hastings. 
Of a history, so imperfect and terminating 
just at the moment in which it was to be- 
come interesting, we can only say that the 
materials, which are copiously and curiously 
collected, are well arranged and combined; 
and that the style, made occasionally harsh 
by inversions not congenial with our lan- 
guage, is uniformly perspicuous and ener- 
getic while it is frequently elegant and har- 
monious. The first book of this work is 
abandoned without reserve to the fables of 
Geoffrey of Monmouth, and was intended, 

ad se vocat, meaq; opera ad res praesertim externas uti voluit. 
P.W. v. 234. 

X 



306 LIFE Or MILTON. 

as the author intimates, rather to suggest sub- 
jects to the poet than maxims to the states- 
man or lessons to the sage/ 

The prosecution of this historical labour 
was suspended by an event which formed a 
great crisis in Milton's life ; and, immedi- 
ately leading him to extended fame and for- 
tune, eventually proved the mean of his ex- 
treme danger and distress. 

On the death of Charles, a government 
nominally representative, and professing to 
spring directly from the will of the people, 
was raised upon the ruins of the throne, In 
this state of things, the executive power was 
lodged, by that portion of the long Parlia- 
ment which had survived the violence of 
the fanatic army, in a council consisting of 
thirty-eight members of the legislative as- 
sembly, and by them the political machine 
was conducted under the name of the Com- 
monwealth of England. A republic, how- 
ever constituted, and how liable soever to 
objection in its best forms and under the 
wisest modifications, is still informed with a 
strong principle of animation, which, actu- 

f I have, therefore., determined to bestow the telling over 
even of these reputed tales j be it for nothing else but in fa- 
vour of our English poets and rhetoricians, who by their art 
will know how to use them judiciously. P. W. iv, 2. 



LIFE OP MILTON. 30? 

ates public spirit and summons into exer- 
tion all the talent and energy of a people, 
The Council of State, as the executive coun- 
cil was called, in which were men of large 
and comprehensive minds, approved itself 
to be eminently qualified for the task of 
empire; and the new Commonwealth pro- 
ceeded, under its direction, to command the 
respect and the terror of Europe. 

England at this juncture, like the g snake, 
described by the poet, on its issuing from its 
winter retreat, erected herself in the reno- 
vated brilliancy of youth, and presented an 
aspect which every where prevented by in- 
timating a defiance of assault. Resolved 
on adopting the old Roman language for 
that of the government in its intercourse 
with foreign nations, one of the first acts of 

£ Gtualis ubi in lucem coluber,, mala gramina pastus, 
Frigida sub terra tumidum quem bruma tegebat j 
Nunc positis novas exuviis, nitidusque juventa 
Lubrica convolvit, sublato pectore, terga, 
Arduus ad solem, et Unguis micat ore trisulcis. 

^Ene.ii. v. 47 1, 

As when a serpent from his winter bed, 

Repair'd by sleep, with earth's green poisons fed, 

Springs into light 5 and, having thrown aside 

His wrinkled age, exults in youthful pride : 

Shoots through the grass his radiant length unroll'd 5 

Or, rear'd against the sun on many a fold, 

Threats with his triple tongue, and eyes of living gold 



' } 

>ld, J 



308 LIFE OE MILTON. 

the new council was the appointment of a 
Latin secretary for the execution of its wise 
and spirited design. The learning, talents, 
and republicanism of Milton immediately 
pointed him out to the sagacity of the 
Council as the person fitted for its purpose; 
and accordingly, without even a suspicion 
of the preferment which was intended for 
him, he was invited into the service of the 
state. 

It has been asked, but as I think un- 
necessarily since his literary and political 
merits had long been known to the public, 
by whose interest he was selected for this 
honourable preference; and it has been sug- 
gested that he might be indebted for it either 
to the younger Vane or to Bradshaw r , who 
were members of the Council, and who have 
been made the subjects, in verse and in prose, 
of his poetic and his eloquent panegyric. We 
have already noticed, and we shall now trans- 
scribe the sonnet which he addressed to the 
former of these eminent characters; and we 
shall then produce, from his " Second De- 
fence," the portrait which he has so admirably 
delineated of the latter. In Vane was exhi- 
bited the most extraordinary union of power 
with imbecillity, of comprehension with nar- 
rowness, of the cool and penetrating states- 



LIFE OF MILTON. 309 

man with the heated and visionary enthu- 
siast. Of Bradshaw, branded and black- 
ened as he has been by the violence of party, 
it may almost be imprudent to hazard a fa- 
vourable opinion. After an interval how- 
ever of a century and a half, the truth may 
surely be spoken even of the judge whose 
office it was to pass sentence upon Charles 
Stuart; and another age, at some distance 
from those peculiar circumstances which 
have unhappily tainted the present with 
passion and prejudice, will do ample jus- 
tice, as I doubt not, to a man who was mis- 
taken indeed and placed in an unfortunate 
situation, but whose radical and vital prin- 
ciple was public virtue; who w^ould have 
been honoured in the purest times of Gre- 
cian and Roman patriotism, and whose high- 
souled and consistent independence refused 
on more than one occasion to submit to the 
will of an imperious and irresistible usurper. 11 

h ' In the afternoon the General went to the Council of State, 
attended by Major General Lambert and Harrison, and as he 
entered the room said, " Gentlemen, if you are met here as pri- 
vate persons, you shall not be disturbed j but if as a Council of 
State, this is no place for you ; and since you cannot but know 
what was done in the morning, so take notice the Parliament 
is dissolved." Serjeant Bradshaw replied, <e Sir, we have heard 
what you did in the morning, but you are mistaken to think 
the Parliament is dissolved; for no power can dissolve them 
but themselves, therefore, take you notice of that." But the 



310 LIFE OF MILTON. 

TO SIR HENRY VANE THE YOUNGER. 

Vane, young in years but in sage counsel old, 
Than whom a better senator ne'er held 
The helm of Rome, when gowns not arms repell'd 

The fierce Epirot and the Afran bold; 

Whether to settle peace or to unfold 
The drift of hollow states, hard to be. spell'd, 
Then to advise how war may, best upheld, 

Move by her two main nerves, iron and gold, 



General not being terrified with big words, the Council thought 
it the wisest way to rise up and go home. Neal's History of the 
Puritans, iv. 63. 

Ludlow, who, with Bradshaw Rich and Vane, was summoned 
before Cromwell in council, thus speaKs of the conduct of Brad- 
shaw in opposition to the formidable usurper. " Cromwell, as 
soon as he saw the Lord President, required him to take out a 
new commission for his office of Chief Justice of Chester, which 
he refused, alleging that he held that place by a grant from the 
Parliament of England to continue, quamdiu se bene gesserit; 
and whether he had carried himself with that integrity which his 
commission exacted, he was ready to submit to a trial by twelve 
Englishmen to be chosen even by Cromwell himself." — He per- 
severed, and with his first commission continued on the bench 
of Chester. 

If Horace had been gifted with prophecy we should have 
concluded that Bradshaw had been present to his vision whei> 
he wrote 

Justum et tenacem propositi virum 
Non vultus instantis tyranni 
Mente quatit solida, &c. 

But perhaps the second line in this stanza might not be consi- 
dered as equally applicable, viz. 

Non civium ardor prava jubentium. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 311 

In all her equipage : besides to know 

Both spiritual power and civil, what each means, 
What severs each thou'st learn'd, which few have donet 

The bounds of either sword to thee we owe: 
Therefore on thy firm hand religion leans 

In peace, and reckons thee her eldest son. 

" Est Joannes Bradscianus* (quod no- 
men libertas ipsa, quacunque gentium coli- 
tur, memoriae sernpiternae celebrandum com- 
mendavit,) nobili familia, ut satis notum est, 
ortus; unde patriis legibus addiscendis pri- 
main omnem aetatem sedulo impend it: dein 
consultissimus causarum ac disertissimus pa- 
tronus, libertatis et populi vindex acerrimus, 
et magnis reipublicae negotiis est adhibitus, 
€t incorrupti judicis munere aliquoties per- 
functus. Tandem uti Regis judicio praesi- 
dere vellet a Senatu rogatus, provinciam 
sane periculosissimam ncn recusavit. Attu- 

lerat enim ad legum scientiam ingeniurn li- 
es o 

berale, animum excelsum, mores integros ac 
nemini obnoxios ; unde illud munus, omni 
propfe exemplo majus ac formidabilius, tot 
sicariorum pugionibus ac minis petitus, ita 
constanter, ita graviter, tanta animi cum 
praesentia ac dignitate gessit atque implevit, 
ut ad hoc ipsum opus, quod jam olim Deus 
edendum in hoc populo mirabili providen- 
tia decreverat, ab ipso numine designatus 
atque factus videretur; et tyrannicidarum 



312 LIFE OF MILTON. 

omnium gloriam tanlum superaverit, quanto 
est humanius, quanto juslius ac majestate 
plenius tyrannum judicare, quam injudica- 
tum occiclere. Alioqui nee tristis nee sevcrus 
sed comis et placidus, personam tamen quam 
suscepit tantam, aequalis ubique sibi ae ve- 
luti consul non unius anni, pari gravitate 
sustinel: ut non de tribunali tan turn, sed 
per omnem vita r n judicare regem dieeres. 
In consiliis et Jaboribus • publicis maxime 
omnium indefessus multisque par unus: do- 
mi, si quis alius, pro suis facultatibus hos- 
pitalis ac splendid us, amicus longe fidclissi- 
mus atquc in omni fortuna certissimus, bene 
mcrentes quoscunque nemo citius aut li- 
bentius agnoscit neque majore benevolentia 
prosequitur; nunc pios, nunc doctos, aut 
quavis ingenii laude cognitos, nunc miiita- 
res etiam et fortes viros ad inopiam redac- 
tos suis opibus sublevat; iis si non indigent, 
colit tamen libens atque amplectitur: alie- 
nas laudes perpetuo praedicare, suas tacere 
solitus; hostium quoque civilium siquis ad 
sanitatem rediit, quod experti sunt plurimi, 
nemo ignoscentior. Quod si causa oppress! 
cujuspiam defendenda palam, si gratia aut 
vis potentiorum oppugnanda, si in quen- 
quam bene meritum ingratitudo publica ob- 
jurganda sit, turn quidem in illo viro vel 



LIFE OF MILTON* 313 

facundiam vel constantiam nemo desideret, 
non patronum, non amicum, vel idoneum 
magis et intrepidum, vel disertiorem alium 
quisquam sibi optet: habet quern non minae 
dimovere recto, non metus aut munera pro- 
posito bono atque officio, vultusque ac men- 
tis firmissimo statu dejicere valeant." 1 

" John Bradshaw, (a name which, in 
every country where her power is acknow- 
ledged, liberty herself has consecrated to 
immortal renown,) was descended, as is ge- 
nerally known, of a noble family. The early 
part of his life he devoted to the study of the 
laws of his country; and then becoming a 
profound lawyer, a most eloquent advocate, 
a zealous assertor of freedom and the peo- 
ple's rights, he was employed in the more 
important affairs of the state, and frequently 
discharged, with unimpeachable integrity, 
the duties of a judge. When, at length, so- 
licited by the Parliament to preside at the 
trial of the King, he did not decline this 
most dangerous commission: for to the sci- 
ence of the law he had brought a liberal 
disposition, a lofty spirit, sincere and unof- 
fending maimers ; and, thus qualified, he 
supported that great and, beyond prece- 

1 P. VV. v. 240- 



314 LITE OF MILTON. 

dent, fearful office, exposed to the threats 
and to the daggers of innumerable assassins, 
with so much firmness, so much weight of 
manner, such presence and dignity of mind 
that he seemed to have been formed and ap- 
pointed immediately by the Deity himself 
for the performance of that deed, which the 
Divine Providence had of old decreed to be 
accomplished in this nation; and so far has 
he exceeded the glory of all tyrannicides as 
it is more humane, more just, more noble to 
try and to pass legal sentence on a tyrant, 
than without trial to put him to death. 

" Though in other respects neither gloomy 
nor severe but gentle and placid, he yet sus- 
tains with unfaltering dignity the character 
which he has borne, and, uniformly consist- 
ent with himself, he appears like a consul 
from whom the fasces are not to depart 
with the year; so that not on the tribunal 
only, but throughout his life you would re- 
gard him as sitting in judgment upon kings. 
Unwearied, and singly equal to a multi- 
tude in his labours for the public, in domes- 
tic life, to the utmost stretch of his power, 
he is hospitable and splendid: the s ted fast- 
ness and adherency of his friendship are not 
to be affected by the vicissitudes of fortune: 
and instant and eager to acknowledge merit 



LIFE OF MILTOST 3l5 

wherever it is discovered, he is munificent to 
reward it. The pious, the learned, the emi- 
nent in any walk of genius, the soldier and 
the brave man are either relieved by his 
wealth, if in distress, or, if not indigent, are 
cultivated by his attentions and cherished 
in his embrace. Delighted to dwell on the 
praises of others, he studiously suppresses his 
own. So great are his placability and rea- 
diness to forgive, that they are extended, as 
very many have experienced, even to the. 
the enemies of himself and of the state when, 
from a sense of their errors, they have reverted 
to reason. 

" If the cause of the oppressed is openly 
to be asserted; if the influence and the strong 
arm of the powerful are to be controlled; if 
the public ingratitude to any meritorious in- 
dividual is to be arraigned, then will no de- 
ficiency of eloquence or of fortitude be seen 
in this great man; then will the client possess 
in him an advocate and a friend suited to 
all his wants and adequate to his highest 
expectations: the cause indeed will be in the 
hands of a defender whom no threats can 
divert from the straight path; whom neither 
intimidation nor bribes can bend from the 
uprightness of duty, or for an instant deject 



316 LIFE OF MILTON. 

from the conscious firmness of his counte- 
nance and the determined altitude of his 
mind/' k 

k Enough has been said of Bradshaw to satisfy the demand of 
my subject: but for the amusement of my readers I am inclined 
to insert in this place an inscription on this resolute but mistaken 
republican, "written by an American pen and deeply blotted with 
the intemperance of party. It is transcribed from a copy, dated, 
Annapolis, June 21, 1//3, and is here given merely as a curiosity, 
and as a symptom of that fiery spirit which was working in the 
bosom of our colonies before it acquired its full strength, and, in 
consequence of the injudicious measures of our government, burst 
into pernicious action. The inscription is stated to have been 
engraven on a cannon; whence copies were taken and hung up 
in almost every house throughout the continent of America. The 
false points of this short production are too obvious to require any 
particular indication. The conduct of Bradshaw was the result, 
as I am persuaded, of high though misdirected principle; and he 
therefore may be allowed the praise which his American eulogist 
has lavished on him: but, under all the circumstances of the 
case, the death of Charles mast for ever be condemned as an act 
in atrocious opposition to the law and the constitution of England, 
and must consequently be branded, to the last revolution of time. 

as a MURDER. 

Stranger! 

ere thou pass, contemplate this cannon ; 

nor regardless be told, 

that near its base lies deposited the dust of 

JOHN BRADSHAW: 

who nobly superior to selfish regards, 

despising alike the pageantry of courtly splendour, 

the blast of calumny, 

and the terrour of regal vengeance, 

presided in the illustrious band of heroes and patriots, 

who fairly and openly adjudged 



LIFE OF MILTON. 317 

To these men, thus ardently praised by 
Milton, has been ascribed, as we have already 
intimated, his present appointment by the 
Council. But if the preference was in the 
first instance the suggestion of friendship, it 
was afterwards proved by the event to be 
the dictate of wisdom. The hand of the Latin 
Secretary most ably concurred with the spirit 
of the executive council; and during his con- 
tinuance in office, which was prolonged to 
the Restoration, the state-papers in his depart- 
ment may be regarded as models in the class 
of diplomatic composition. They speak in- 
deed the language of energy and wisdom; 
and entitled equally to the applause of the 
scholar and the statesman, they must have 

CHARLES STUART, 

tyrant of England, 

to a public and exemplary death ; 

thereby presenting to the amazed world, 

and transmitting down through applauding ages, 

the most glorious example 

of unshaken virtue, 

love of freedom, 

and impartial justice, 

ever exhibited on the blood-stained theatre 

of human action. 

Oh! Reader! 

pass not on till thou hast blessed his memory $. 

and never — never forget 

THAT REBELLION TO TYRANTS 
IS OBEDIENCE TO GOD. 



318 LIFE OF MILTON. 

impressed foreign states with a high opinion 
of that government for which they were wi it- 
ten, and in the service of which so much 
ability was engaged. It may be observed 
that the character of their immediate author 
is too great to be altogether lost in that of 
the ministerial organ ; and that in many 
of them Milton may be traced in distinct, 
though not discordant existence from the 
power for whom he acts. l The letters which 
he wrote in the Protector's name to mediate 
for the oppressed protestants of Piedmont, 
whose- sufferings had revived the horror of the 
catholic atrocities in Ireland, might be cited 
in testimony of what I affirm. These official 

1 See Letters to the Duke of Savoy, to the Prince of Transyl- 
vania, to the King of Sweden, to the States of Holland, Switzer- 
land, and Geneva, to the Kings of France and of Denmark. 
P. W. ii. 503.— 0O9. 

It may be proper to observe that this active and powerful 
interposition of the Protector's was productive of its intended 
effect. The catholic tyrant desisted from the slaughter of his 
innocent subjects, and these miserable people had a breathing- 
time from their calamities. I call them, as they are called in 
these official despatches, by the generally known name of Pro- 
testants: but the dissenters from the papal church who occu- 
pied the vallies of Piedmont had neither connexion nor a com- 
mon origin with those who were properly called protestants 
from one of the first acts of their association in Germany. The 
Waldenses asserted a much more ancient pedigree 5 and assumed 
to be of the old Roman church before it was corrupted by the 
papal innovations. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 319 

instruments are faithful, no doubt, to the 
general purposes of him under whose au- 
thority they were produced: but they exhi- 
bit also much of the liberal and benevolent 
spirit of the secretary : their mirror cannot 
be convicted of falsehood or perversion: but, 
with unquestionable flattery, it reflects the 
harsh features of the English usurper so soft- 
ened into positive beauty as to conciliate our 
affection equally with our respect. 

But it was not merety in conducting the 
correspondence of the state with foreign 
powers, that Milton's ministerial agency was 
employed. It seems to have been used by 
the Council in all cases which related to fo- 
reigners, and to have been nearly of an equal 
extent with that of the modern Secretary of 
State for the Foreign Department. On this 
subject a fact is recorded by Philips which, 
as it attests the efficiency of the Council and 
of its Secretary, may properly be inserted in 
in our page. 

At a period not precisely ascertained by 
the narrator, but evidently soon after the 
establishment of the new republic, a person 
arrived from France with a very sumptuous 
train, in the assumed character of an agent 
from the Prince of Conde, then in arms against 
the French Government as it was conducted 



320 LIFE OF MILTON. 

by Cardinal Mazarin. The character how- 
ever of the pretended agent of Conde incur- 
ring the suspicion of the English Council, its 
official instruments were employed with so 
much activity and effect that, in the short 
space of four or five days, the person in ques- 
tion was discovered, by intelligence procured 
from Paris, to be an emissary of the exiled 
king's; and on the very next morning, the Se- 
cretary's kinsman, (Philips himself, as we may 
conclude,) was sent to him with an order from 
the Council to depart the kingdom within three 
days or to expect the punishment of a spy. 

On another occasion also, as the cir- 
cumstance is related by Philips, were the 
ability and official diligence of Milton and 
his masters v(^ry conspicuously displayed. 
When the Dutch, desirous of avoiding a 
rupture with England, had despatched three 
ambassadors to the English government 
with proposals for an accommodation, and, 
on the return of these delegates without the 
accomplishment of their purpose, had re- 
solved on sending a plenipotentiary with 
lower terms and with a design of gaining 
time, the Council of State succeeded in pro- 
curing a copy of this minister's instructions 
even previously to his embarkation ; and before 
he could make his public entry into London, 



LIFE OF MILTON. 321 

an answer to all his propositions was pre- 
pared and lay ready to be delivered to him 
at the Secretary's Office." 

Scarcely was Milton seated in his new 
and honourable place, when he was sum- 
moned by the government to the discharge 
of a peculiar duty, adapted to his powers, and 
of no inconsiderable importance. 

Immediately on the death of the king, a 
book, with his name as its author, had been 
published under the title of *Entuv Bx<n\txv] (Icon 
Basilike) or " The Portraiture of his sacred 
Majest}' in his solitudes and sufferings/' The 
stroke of violence, by which Charles had fallen, 
had excited very generally throughout Eng- 
land a sensation of sympathy and a strong 
sentiment of disapprobation. He appeared 
to have been the victim of an ambitious and a 
sanguinary faction; and, while his faults were 
generously buried in his grave, his virtues were 
seen in more than their proper size and were 
admitted to more than their just share of 
praise. The publication therefore of a work 
professedly by his own hand, in which he 
is represented in the constant intercourse of 
prayer with his Creator, asserting the inte- 
grity of his motives before the great Searcher 
of hearts and urging an awful appeal from 

m Philips's Life of Milton/ xliii^ xliv. 

y 



322 LIFE Or MILTON. 

the injustice and the cruelty of man to the 
justice and the clemency of God, was calcu- 
lated in a supreme degree to agitate every 
bosom in his favour, and to make every free 
tongue vibrate in execration of the inhuma- 
nity of his enemies. 

To counteract the consequences of this 
popular production, which threatened to be 
alarmingly great, the Council determined on 
availing itself of the abilities of its new se- 
cretary. Convinced of the inefficacy of any 
of the means of power to suppress a favou- 
rite publication, or magnanimously overlook- 
ing them, it resolved to wield the only wea- 
pons adapted to a war with opinion, to wage 
book against book, to oppose fact with fact, 
and argument, wherever it could be found, 
with argument. It delegated therefore to 
Milton the task of contending with the Icon 
Basilike; and submitted the merits of its 
cause to the arbitrament of the pen. 

The 'EmufoKkagflw (Iconoclastes) or Image- 
breaker, which was the apposite title affixed 
to this refutation of the imputed work of 
royal authorship, may be regarded as one of 
the most perfect and powerful of Milton's con- 
troversial compositions. Pressing closely on 
its antagonist and tracing him step by step, 
it either exposes the fallacy of his reasoning, 



LIFE OF MILTON. 323 

or the falsehood of his assertions, or the hol- 
lowness of his professions, or the convenient 
speciousness of his devotion. In argument 
and in style compressed and energetic, per- 
spicuous and neat, it discovers a quickness 
which never misses an advantage, and a 
keenness of remark which carries an irresist- 
ible edge. It cannot certainly be read by 
any man, whose reason is not wholly under 
the dominion of prejudice, without its en- 
forcing a conviction unfavourable to the 
royal party; and it justly merited the ho- 
nourable distinction, assigned to it by royalist 
vengeance, of burning in the same flames 
with the " Defence of the People of England/' 
The object of its attack indeed is by no 
means strong. Separated from the cause of 
the monarchy and of the church of England, 
the cause of Charles is much more open to 
assault than it is susceptible of defence. If 
he has been lowered beneath his just level 
by his enemies, he has been proportionably 
raised above it by his friends, and, with a 
nice regard to truth, we may probably place 
him in the central point between Nero, to 
whom he has been resembled by the former, 
and either of the Antonines, above whom 
he has been advanced, not without a de- 
gree of profane temerity, to the honours 



324 LITE OP MILT ON". 

of sainthood and martyrdom by the latter. 
His private life was not perhaps liable to 
censure, as it was blemished only with com- 
mon imperfection ; but his public conduct 
betrayed the violence of a despot with the 
duplicity and equivocating morality of a fol- 
lower of Loyola. 

The opening of the Iconoclastes may be 
cited as exhibiting dignity of sentiment and 
excellence of composition. " n To descant 
on the misfortunes of a person, fallen from 
so high a dignity, who hath also paid his 
final debt to nature and his faults, is neither 
of itself a thing commendable nor the in- 
tention of this discourse. Neither was it 
fond ambition, nor the vanity to get a name, 
present or with posterity, by w T riting against 
a king. I never was so thirsty after fame, 
nor so destitute of other hopes and means, 
better and more certain, to attain it: for 
kings have gained glorious titles from their 
favourers by writing against private men, as 

n Milton disclaims, on another occasion, any intention of in- 
sulting the memory of Charles. 

(i Non manibus regiis insultans, ut insimulorj sed reginam 
veritatem regi Carolo anttponendam arbitratus." Dei. secun. 
P. W. v. 235. 

The majesty of truth he deemed to be an object more worthy 
of regard than that of kings; and was he to be censured for such 
an opinion I 



LIFE OF MILTON. 325 

Henry VIII did against Luther; but no man 
ever gained much honour by writing against 
a king, as not usually meeting with that 
force of argument in such courtly antago- 
nists which to convince might add to his 
reputation. Kings most commonly, though 
strong in legions, are but weak at arguments; 
as they who ever have been accustomed from 
their cradle to use their will only as their 
right hand, their reason always as their left. 
Whence, unexpectedly constrained to that 
kind of combat, they prove but weak and 
puny adversaries. Nevertheless, for their 
sakes who, through custom, simplicity, or 
want of better teaching, have not more se- 
riously considered kings than in the gaudy 
name of majesty, and admire them and their 
doings as if they breathed not the same 
breath with other mortal men, I shall make 
no scruple, (for it seems to be the challenge 
of hi in and all his party,) to take up this 
gauntlet, though a king's, in the behalf of 
liberty and the commonwealth." 

It would be endless to extract all the in- 
stances, which occur in this work, of strong 
argument, keen satire, and brilliant compo- 
sition. I will content) myself therefore with 

[ C P.W. ii. 391. 



3 C 26 LIFE OF MILTON*. 

transcribing the following short and spirited 
paragraph. 

" But p what needed that? They knew 
his chiefest arms left him were those only 
which the ancient Christians were wont to 
use against their persecutors, prayers and 
tears. O sacred reverence of God ! respect 
and shame of men! whither were ye fled 
when these hypocrisies were uttered? Was 
the kingdom, then, at all that cost of blood 
to remove from him none but prayers and 
tears? What were those thousands of blas- 
pheming cavaliers about him, whose mouths 
Jet fly oaths and curses by the volley? were 
those the prayers? and those carouses drunk 
to the confusion of all things good or holy ? 
did those minister the tears? Were they pray- 
ers and tears, which were listed at York, 
mustered on Heworth Moor, and laid siege 
to Hull for the guard of his person? Were 
prayers and tears at so high a rate in Hol- 
land that nothing could purchase them but 
the crown-jewels? Yet they in Holland (such 
word was sent us) sold them for guns, cara- 
bines, mortar-pieces, cannons, and other 
deadly instruments of war; which, when they 
came to York, were all, no doubt, by the 

? P, W, ii._469. 



LIFE OF MILTOK. 327 

merit of some great saint, suddenly trans- 
formed into prayers and tears; and, being 
divided into regiments and brigades, were the 
only arms which mischieved us in all those 
battles and encounters. These were his chief 
arms, whatever we must call them; and yet 
such arms as thejr, who fought for the com- 
monwealth, have by the help of better prayers 
vanquished and brought to nothing/' 

In one passage of this work Milton has 
been severe in his animadversions on the 
King for having adopted a prayer from the 
Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney, and given it, 
with a few immaterial alterations, as his own 
to the bishop who attended him on the scaf- 
fold. Whether Charles himself transcribed 
this prayer from the Arcadia, or whether un- 
conscious of its origin he received it from one 
of his clerical attendants, the offence seems 
to have been of a very pardonable nature, 
and certainly undeserving of the harsh treat- 
ment which it has experienced from his ad- 
versary. The expressions, or the metaphysical 
elements of a prayer, which are merely the 
exciters of ideas in the minds of the speaker 
or the hearer, are not, like the meats offered 
upon an idol-altar, susceptible of pollution 
from the object to whom they may be ad- 
dressed; and are to be received or rejected 



328 LIFE OF MILTON. 

by any subsequent votarist as they may be 
accommodated or otherwise to the purposes 
of his particular devotion. The blame there- 
fore of plagiarism is the highest which in this 
instance can be imputed to the King; and 
even to this perhaps he may not properly be 
exposed, since, concluding the writer of the 
prayer to be generally known, he might give 
it as the just representative of his own feelings 
and sentiments, and therefore in an allowable 
sense as his own, to the attendant on his last 
moments, bishop Juxon. 

The disproportionate severity with which 
Milton has arraigned this petty inadvertency, 
rather than offence, has exposed him to the 
charge of having been its author in the first 
instance that he might subsequently be its 
censurer. On the authority of Hills, the Pro- 
tector's printer, and who afterwards, for the 
emolument of the same office under James II, 
professed himself a Roman catholic, Milton 
is accused of having prevailed, with the assist- 
ance of Bradshaw, on Du Gard, who was 
then printing an edition of the Icon Uasilike, 
to bring discredit on that publication by in- 
terpolating it with this prayer from the Arca- 
dia. If a moment's belief were due to so 
idle a tale, we might confidently affirm that 
never before did men descend from such 



LIFE OF MILTONS 32Q 

heights of character to an object so con- 
temptibly minute: an eagle stooping from his 
proudest wing to seize upon an earthworm 
would inadequately represent the folly of 
Milton and Bradshaw in their condescension 
to forge, for the purpose of casting a mere 
atom into the heavily-charged scale of the 
departed king. Fortunately however we pos- 
sess the most satisfactory evidence of their 
exemption from the imputed meanness. q By 
Royston, who was reported to have received 
the manuscript from the King, and not by 
Du Gard the printer to the Parliament, was 
that edition of the Icon printed in which the 
controverted prayer was originally inserted; 
and Roys ton's press was remote from the sus- 
picion of any contact with Milton or his 
supposed accomplice. Notwithstanding this 
full though short confutation, which was first 
adduced by Toland, of the testimony of the 
unprincipled Hills, his calumny has been 
revived by the infamous Lauder, admitted 
by Lauder's friend and coadjutor, Dr. John- 

1 1 have now in my possession the first edition of the Icon 
Basilike printed in 1(549 (for R. Royston at the Angel in Ivy- 
lane) to which this prayer, called fC A Prayer in time of Cap- 
tivity," is attached. Let us not then again be told by Milton's 
enemies of his forgery in this instance, or be soothed by his 
friends with their hopes and their belief that he was incapable 
q£ committing it. 



330 Life of milton. 

son/ and only faintly and timidly denied by 
the last compiler of our author's life, Mr. 
Todd. s 

r As I have seldom, from the commencement of the pre- 
sent work, adverted to this libeller of Milton, my readers will 
perhaps pardon me, if I dedicate this note to his honour. 
Dr. Johnson tells us that " the papers, which the King gave 
to Dr. Juxon on the scaffold, the regicides took away, so that 
they were at least the publishers of this prayer 3 and Dr. 
Birch, who examined the question with great care, was in- 
clined to think them the forgers." Fuller, who must have 
known and who would not have concealed the truth, shall 
refute the former part of this egregious paragraph : and Dr. 
Birch himself the latter. But " faction, Dr. Johnson! seldom 
leaves a man honest, however it might find him." — Fuller in his 
Church History says,— " His Majesty being upon the scaffold 
held in his hand a small piece of paper, some four inches square, 
containing heads whereon in his speech he intended to dilate $ 
and a tall soldier, looking over the King's shoulders, read it a3 
the King held it in his hand. His speech ended, he gave that 
small paper to the bishop of London. After his death, the offi- 
cers demanded the paper of the bishop, who because of the depth 
of his pocket, smallness of the paper, and the mixture of others 
therewith could not so soon produce it as was required. At last 
he brought it forth $ but therewith the others were unsatisfied, 
(jealousy is quick of growth) as not the same which his Majesty 
delivered to him. When presently the soldier, whose rudeness 
had formerly overinspected it in the King's hand, attested this 
the very same paper, and prevented farther suspicions, which 
might have terminated to the bishop's trouble." (Fuller's Church 
History of Britain, book xi. 236. ed. 1055.) So much for the 
King's papers taken from Dr. Juxon on the scaffold by the regi- 
cides! Let us now attend to Dr. Birch. [Life of Milton, p. xxxiii. 
4to ed.] " In the course of the controversy about the book, 

s See Account of tha Life of Milton, by Todd, p. 74. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 331 

Of the Iconoclastes it only remains to be 

Milton's charge upon the King of borrowing the prayer of Pamela 
from Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, inserted in some editions of the 
Eituvv was retorted upon himself, as if this prayer had been added 
by his contrivance who in conjunction with serjeant Bradshaw 
had prevailed upon Du Gard the printer to insert it, in order to 
cast a disgrace upon the King, and blast the reputation of the 
Icon. This supposed fact was advanced chiefly upon the au- 
thority of Henry Hills the printer, who had frequently asserted 
it to Dr. Gill and Dr. Bernard, his physicians,, as they testified. 
But Hills was not himself the printer who was dealt with in 
this manner ; and consequently he could have the story only 
from hearsay ; and though he was Cromwell's printer, yet af- 
terwards he turned papist in the reign of James Hd. in order to 
be that king's printer; and it was at that time he used to relate 
this story. Besides which, it is highly improbable that Milton 
and Bradshaw should make him their confident unnecessarily 
in such an affair, and laugh in his presence at their imposing 
such a cheat upon the worldj or that he should conceal it dur- 
ing the life of the former, who survived the Restoration so many 
years. So that such a testimony from such a person is not to 
be admitted against a man, who, as his learned and ingenious 
editor (Bishop Newton) observes, had a soul above being guilty 
of so mean an action!" 

I must be permitted to prolong this note by remarking on an 
attack which has been made on another passage of the Icono- 
clastes. In a note on Milton's first elegy, Mr. Warton observes 
fe His (Milton's) warmest poetical predilections were at last 
totally obliterated by civil and religious enthusiasm. Seduced 
by the gentle eloquence of fanaticism" (make of it, gentle 
reader, what sense you can,) " he listened no longer to the 
wild and native wood-notes of ' fancy's sweetest child.' In 
his Iconoclastes he censures King Charles for studying ' One 
whom we know was the closet companion of his solitudes, 
William Shakspere.' This remonstrance, which not only re- 
sulted from his abhorrence of a king, but from his disappro- 
bation of plays, would have come with more propriety from 



332 LITE OF MILTON. 

said that it was first printed in 1649; that a 

Prynne or Hugh Peters." Then follows a just panegyric on the 
cultivation of the King's mind and the elegance of his taste. 

To talk of " the poetical predilections" of the future author of 
Paradise Lost as totally obliterated, or to impute an abhorrence 
of plays to the man who not only wrote Samson Agonistes, 
but who has left behind him a variety of subjects for the drama 
selected, at a period subsequent to the publication of the Icono- 
clastes, from profane history, among which is the story of 
Macbeth, is abundantly strange, if we must not call it absurd. 
But to enter into a serious contest with the perverse imbecillity 
of this note of Mr. Warton's would be to the last degree idle. 
The criminated passage in the Iconoclastes, which I shall pro- 
duce, will prove that it was not in Milton's contemplation to 
censure the King for studying Shakespeare; and that Mr. Warton 
must either not have understood what he quoted, or, what my 
opinion of his probity will not allow me to suspect, must have 
quoted with a determination to misrepresent. Speaking of the 
pieces of devotion with which the Icon is so thickly bestrown, 
Milton observes that * " he who from such a kind of psalmistry 
or any other verbal devotion, without the pledge and earnest of 
suitable deeds, can be persuaded of a zeal and true righteous- 
ness in the person, hath much yet to learn and knows not that 
the deepest policy of a tyrant hath been ever to counterfeit 
religious : and Aristotle in his Politics hath mentioned that 
special craft among twelve other tyrannical sophisms. Neither 
want we examples. Andronicus Conanenus, the Byzantine em- 
peror, though a most cruel tyrant, is reported by Nicetas to 
have been a constant reader of St. Paul's epistles ; and by con- 
tinual study to have so incorporated the phrase and style of that 
transcendent apostle into all his familiar letters that the imi- 
tation seemed to vie with the original. Yet this availed not to 
deceive the people of that empire, who, notwithstanding the 
saint's vizard, tore him to pieces for his tyranny. From stories 
of this nature, both ancient and modern, which abound, the 
poets also, and some English, have been in this point so mind- 

* P. W. ii. 406. 



LIEE OF MILTON". 333 

second edition of it appeared in the folio Wr- 
ing year; that in 1652 it was again published 
in London by Da Gard in a French trans- 
lation; and that it received two answers, one 
with the title of 'Emuv aKXaofjoq (Icon aclastos, 
or the Image unbroken) in 1651; and the 
other, called Vindiciae Carolina, in 1.692. 
Though it was more consistent with Mil- 

ful of decorum as to put never more pious words in the mouth 
of any person than of a tyrant. I shall not instance an ab- 
struse author, wherein the King might be less conversant, but 
one, whom we well know was the closet companion of his 
solitudes, William Shakspearej who introduces the person of 
Richard III speaking in as high a strain of piety and mortifica- 
tion as is uttered in any passage of this book; and sometimes 
to the same sense and purpose with some words in this place : 
<c I intended," saith he (the King) <( not only to oblige my 
friends but my enemies:" the like saith Richard (act ii. scene 1.) 
e{ I do not know that Englishman alive 
"With whom my soul is any jot at odtls 
More than the infant that is born to-night — 
I thank my God for my humility." 

Mr. Waldron, in his republication of Downes's Roscius An- 
glicanus," has preceded me, as I am told, (for I have not read 
Mr. Waldron's work,) in the detection of this false arraignment 
of Milton by the late Poet Laureat, a circumstance of which I 
was not aware when I first printed my note. But this repeated 
refutation of the injurious falsehood has not prevented its revival, 
(with the aggravation of making Milton contemptuously call 
Shakespeare a player,) by Mr. Walter Scott in his newly published 
Life of Dryden." * Are we hence to conclude that this slander of 
Milton is to be employed, as a common place, by every writer 
who may be attached to the despicable Stuarts, ajid who can force 
it into his page? 

* See Scott's Life of Dryden, p. 18. 



334 LITE OF MILTON. 

ton's object to direct his reply immediately 
against the King and consequently to con- 
sider the Icon Basilike as the production of 
the royal pen, he could not altogether re- 
frain from intimating his suspicions of its 
authenticity. u But as to the author of these 
soliloquies/' (he observes,) " whether it were 
undoubtedly the late King, as is vulgarly be-* 
lieved, or any secret coadjutor, and some 
stick not to name him, it can add nothing 
to nor shall take from the weight, if any be, 
of reason which he brings/' 11 " But the mat- 
ter here considerable is not whether the King, 
or his household rhetorician, have made a pithy 
declamation against tumults, but first whe- 
ther there were tumults or not,"* &c. To 
these suspicions Milton was obviously led 
by the internal evidence of the work, which 
seemed strongly tainted with the pedantry 
of the gown and discovered in its style a 
more scholastic and artificial form than was 
likely to be the result of the education and 
the habits of a prince. 

On a passage in this production, in which 
is introduced the word, demagogue, at that 
time not common in our language, our author 
remarks, " Setting aside the affrightment of 

U P. W. ii. 421. x Ibid. 3Q8. 



J.IFE OF MILTON. 335 

this goblin-word; for the King, by his leave, 
cannot coin English, as he could money, to 
be current: and it is believed this wording 
was above his known style and orthography, 
and accuses the whole composure to be con- 
scious of some other author/' 7 

" These petty glosses and conceits/' says 
the Iconoclastes in another place, " on the 
high and secret judgments of God, besides 
the boldness of unwarrantable commenting, 
are so weak and shallow and so like the 
quibbles of a court sermon, that we may 
safely reckon them either fetched from such 
a pattern, or that the hand of some house- 
hold priest foisted them in/ ,z 

These feelings of doubt respecting the au- 
thor of the Icon were not wholly confined to 
Milton: for the same internal evidence of 
forgery which in this instance had influenced 
his judgment, was sufficiently strong to in- 
fluence the conviction of others. In an able 
work, published, soon after the Iconoclastes, 
in 1649, with the title of 44 'Emm aXyGivvi" (Icon 
alethine) or the true Image, the charge of 
spuriousness is brought and urged with great 
power against the Icon; which is ascribed by 
this anonymous writer, who exhibits much of 

y P. W. ii. 42/. z Ibid. 452. 



336 LIFE OF MILTON. 

Milton's spirit, to a doctor of the Church of 
England, seeking, by an enterprize so me- 
ritorious with his party as this serviceable 
fraud, to force his way on a fortunate change 
of things to some of the rich preferments of 
his church. To this work is prefixed a fron- 
tispiece, in which, on a curtain's being drawn 
aside by a hand issuing from the roof, is dis- 
covered a dignitary of the English Church in 
his full canonical dress: and beneath are 
inscribed the following lines, w 7 hich, in 
their close connexion with my subject, have 
sufficient merit to justify me for inserting 
them. 

The curtain's drawn : all may perceive the plot. 
And him, who truly the black babe begot. 
Whose sable mantle makes me bold to say, 
A Phaeton Sol's chariot ruled that day. 
Presumptuous Priest ! to skip into the throne; 
And make the King his bastard issue own! 
The author therefore hath conceived it meet, 
The doctor should do penance in this sheet. a 

But neither the charge of forgery against 
the Kings book, as it was then called, thus 

a This work, (which was printed in London by Thomas 
Paine in 1649) was answered the same year, by a very inferior 
writer in a pamphlet entitled " 'Eikujv y rfi<rri" or " the faithful 
Image," — and these productions may be regarded as the precur- 
sors of that long and violent controversy, which, after some 
interval, ensued on the subject of the authenticity of the Icon; 



LIFE OF MILT03*. 337 

directly and articulately pronounced ; nor the 
suspicions of imposition, which were clearly 
expressed in the Iconoclastes, found any echo 
in the general mind; and the Icon, conti- 
nuing to make proselytes to the cause of its 
reputed author, retained the idolatrous regard 
of a numerous party, whose prejudices it 
flattered and to whose interests it was essen- 
tially subservient. The first shock to the pub- 
lic conviction, respecting its genuineness, 
was occasioned by the discovery on a blank 
page of one of these books, when offered for 
sale by auction with the library of the first 
earl of Anglesey, of a memoran,duni 5 b in that 
nobleman's own hand-writing, attesting the 
formal disavowal of the Icon as a work of 
their fathers by Charles II and the duke of 
Yprk. 

b The memorandum is as follows: — " King Charles the Se- 
cond and the duke of York did both (in the last session of par- 
liament, 1675, when 1 -shewed them, in the lords house, the 
written copy of this book, wherein are some corrections and 
alterations written with the late King Charles the First's own 
hand,) assure me that this was none of the said King's compiling, 
but made by Dr. Gauden, bishop of Exeter: which I here in- 
sert for the undeceiving of others in this point, by attesting so 
much under my own hand. Anglesey." 

The sale in question was in the year 1 686*, by the celebrated 
auctioneer, Millington, who accidentally saw the memorandum 
as he was turning over the pages of the book during the slow 
bidding of the auction. 



338 LIFE OF MILTON. 

On this strong excitement of suspicion, 
reference was made to Dr. Walker, a clergy- 
man of Essex, between whom and Dr. Gau- 
den, asserted by the royal brothers to be the 
writer of the Icon and at this time deceased, 
a confidential intimacy was known to have 
subsisted ; and the testimony of this respect- 
able divine was so circumstantial and con- 
clusive as apparently to leave no wreck of a 
doubt floating upon the subject. 

Dr. Gauden, as his friend declared, had 
communicated to him the first seminal idea 
of the Icon Basilikfe and the succeeding 
growth of the work, as it branched into chap- 
ters and assumed the proportions of its form. 
Dr. Walker stated the disapprobation, which 
he had intimated, of the intended impo- 
sition on the public, with the apology ad- 
vanced in reply by his friend ; and then re- 
lated the circumstance of his having accom- 
panied Dr. Gauden to the bishop of Salis- 
bury, (Dr. Duppa,) who was an accom- 
plice in the plan, and who, at that meeting, 
agreed to contribute two chapters on subjects 
which he recommended as necessary to the 
completion of the work. Dr. Walker pro- 
ceeded to affirm that he had been made ac- 
quainted by Dr. Gauden with the fact of his 
having transmitted, by the marquis of Hert- 



LIFE OF MILTON. 339 

ford, a copy of this production to the King 
during his confinement in the Isle of Wight ; 
and that Dr. Walker himself had been in- 
trusted with a part of the manuscript for the 
purpose of delivering it, under certain pre- 
cautions, to Royston the printer through the 
intervention of Dr. Gauden's steward. Dr. 
Walker further reported that his friend, after 
the Restoration, had informed him of the 
transaction's having been made known to the 
duke of York, who in acknowledgment of 
the service had promised the bishoprick of 
Winchester to this efficient promoter of the 
royal cause : a promise which was afterwards 
ill performed by his translation to the see of 
Worcester. In addition to all this mass of 
proof, Dr. Walker lastly asserted that many 
of the expressions in the devotional parts 
of the Icon were known to be peculiar to Dr. 
Gauden, by whom they had been frequently 
used in his religious exercises, both in pri- 
vate and in public. 

To Dr. Walker's account, which it con- 
firms in every essential particular, the written 
narrative left by Mrs. Gauden, the bishop's 
widow, adds many circumstances which com- 
plete, if any thing were before wanted to 
complete, the integrity and roundness of the 
evidence. In this narrative, which is un- 



340 life or MILTON. 

questionably authentic, Mrs. Gauden states 
the original intention of her husband when 
he planned the work; the title of Suspiria 
Regalia, or the Royal Sighs, which he first 
affixed to it and which he subsequently 
changed to that of Icon Basilike; the con- 
versation, reported by the marquis of Hert- 
ford to have passed between bishop Duppa 
and the King, when the manuscript with 
the name and the design of the author was 
communicated to his Majesty; the person, (a 
royalist divine of the name of c Symmonds,) 
by whose means her husband had obtained 
the printing of a part of the work at Roy- 
ston's press, where it had been received as 
the immediate production of the King's; the 
discovery and the interruption of the print- 
ing with the danger which had compelled 
her husband to abscond, in consequence of 
the arrest of Symmonds whose opportune 
death, immediately after his apprehension, 

c This Mr. Symmonds, of Rayne in Essex, was ejected from 
his benefice by the Parliament in 1642, for preaching the doc- 
trines of passive obedience and the divine right of kings. He 
avowed and justified in a pamphlet called " The loyal Subject's 
Belief,'' the offensive doctrines which had been imputed to him. 
His royalist spirit is fierce against the Parliament. " If David's 
heart smote him," he says, " for cutting off Saul's garment, what 
would it have done if he had kept him from his castles, towns,, 
and ships?" Neale's Hist, of the Puritans,, v. iii. c. 1. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 341 

had relieved the fears of his employer; the 
discourse of Dr.Morley, d after the Restoration, 
with her husband, in which that prelate had 
talked of the service rendered by Dr. Gauden 
to the royal cause, both at home and abroad, 
by writing the kings book, and had mentioned 
that he had communicated the whole business 
to Sir Edward Hyde, who had discovered 
much approbation of Dr. Gauden's work and 
conduct. Mrs. Gauden concludes her narra- 
tive by assigning an illness, which threatened 
his life, as the immediate cause of her husband's 
making the important disclosure to the King, 
(Charles II;) who was much pleased with it, 
and confessed " that he did often wonder 
that his father should have gotten time and 
privacy enough in his troubles to compose so 
excellent a piece, and written with so much 
learning." 

After this minute and satisfactory rela- 
tion, which certainly does not require and 
indeed will scarcely admit of any corrobo- 
ration, it may be superfluous to notice two 
letters written by Dr. Gauden, one to the 
duke of York and the other to the lord chan- 
cellor, Hyde, urging the writer's services with 
reference to the Icon ; or an answer from the 

4 Consecrated bishop of Worcester on the 28th of Oct. l66Q< 



342 LIFE OF MILTON. 

lord chancellor, in which he says to Dr. Gau- 
den, " the particular, you mention, has in- 
deed been imparted to me as a secret: I am 
sorry that I ever knew it ; and when it ceases 
to be a secret it will please none but Mr. 
Milton." 

To this power of testimony, sufficient as 
one would imagine to force the most im- 
pregnable infidelity, the unyielding spirit of 
party prejudice has attempted an opposi- 
tion. Against the assertion of the two sons 
of Charles, against the letters of the lord 
chancellor, Hyde and of Dr. Gauden, against 
the explicit and specific depositions of the 
confidential friend and of the widow of Dr. 
Gauden have been thrown into the scale the 
inconsistent or the inconclusive testimonies 
of persons, who have affirmed either that 
the manuscript in dispute was found among 
the King's papers at Naseby and had been 
restored to him by Fairfax; or that it had 
been seen, and even partly read in the King's 
own hand upon his table in the Isle of Wight; 
or that it had been quoted by the King, or 
that it contained things similar to what the 
King had been heard to say. 

My readers probably would not thank 
me if I were to lengthen this digression, aL 
ready too far extended, by entering fully 



LIFE OF MILTON. 343 

into the examination of all the evidence which 
has been adduced, and of all the ingenuity 
which has been exhibited on this much con- 
troverted question. What I have said how- 
ever may enable them to form their deci- 
sion upon the subject; and may perhaps 
unite their wonder with mine at the strange 
disingenuousness of Mr. Hume. " The proofs 
brought/' says this historian, u that this w r ork 
(the Icon) is or is not the King's, are so con- 
vincing that if an impartial reader peruse any 
one side apart, he will think it impossible 
that arguments could be produced sufficient 
to counterbalance so strong an evidence ; 
and, when he compares both sides, he will be 
some time at a loss to fix any determination. 
Should an absolute suspense of judgment be 
found difficult or disagreeable in so interest- 
ing a question, I must confess that I much 
incline to give the preference to the argu- 
ments of the royalists/' Admirable! but let 
us proceed. " The testimonies, which prove 
that performance to be the King's, are more 
numerous, more certain and direct" (what! 
than the testimonies of Dr. "Walker and of 
Mrs. Gauden?) " than those on the other 
side. This is the case even if we consider 
the external evidence; but when we weigh 
the internal, derived from the style and com- 



344 LITE OF MILTON. 

position, there is no comparison. These me- 
ditations resemble in elegance* purit}', neat- 
ness and simplicity the genius of those per- 
formances, which we know with certainty 
to have flowed from the royal pen; but are 
so unlike the bombast, perplexed, rhetorical 
and corrupt style of Dr. Gauden, to whom 
they are ascribed, that no human testimony 
seems Sufficient to convince us that he was 
the author." This certainly is excellent; af- 
fecting to exhibit the most exact poise with 
one greatly preponderating scale the most 
delicate and tremulous reserve with the most 
determined preference, the most specious 
ostentation of candour with the most inju- 
rious exertion of prejudice. 

On the internal evidence from the style 
and composition of this contested work, the 
opinion, which is here so authoritatively 
given, is at direct variance with that of Mil- 
ton : but we might safely refer the cause at 
issue, together with the credit of our author's 
judgment, to the sentence of any reader of 
common taste and erudition. Having passed, 
as it is said, through fifty editions' in the 

e Forty-seven impressions of the Icon were circulated in 
England alone ; and 48,500 copies sold. In the very year of its 
publication it was translated into Latin and French. 

Lord Clarendon's silence respecting this work is admitted 



LIFE OF MILTON. 345 

space of one year, the Icon must still be in 
many hands; and we must consequently 
stand under the correction of numbers when 
we affirm, in opposition to the northern his- 
torian, that the composition of this little vo- 
lume is radically different from that of the 
writings which unquestionably came from 
the pen of Charles ; that its pages are some- 
times strewn with false flowers and the glit- 
ter of fanciful conceits; that its style is an- 
tithetical and artificially constructed, and 
that it is, to avail myself of the words of the 
acute and spirited Toland, infinitely more 
like to that of a doctor than to that of a king. 
Its authenticity indeed was questioned by 
many, before the production of those testi- 
monies which we have noticed against it, in 
consequence alone of that internal evidence, 
adduced by Mr. Hume, with so much san- 
guine assurance, in its support/ 

by Mr. Hume as an argument against its authenticity. The 
duke of York declared to bishop Burnet, in 1 673, that it was 
written by Dr. Gauden and not by the King. Bishop Burnet's 
Life, p 51. 

f The acute and able Laing, whom I have already had more 
than one occasion to cite, has drawn up the evidence on this sub- 
ject with a very masterly hand. I had written my account of 
the literary imposture in question, before I read his; and it gave 
me particular satisfaction to find my opinions precisely the same 
with those which he has so powerfully supported. He refers the 
reader for a specimen of Gauden's style, and for a proof of its 



346 LIFE OF MILTON. 

In this short pause of the principal ao 

resemblance to that of the Icon, to that prelate's Life of 
Hooker and the preceding dedication. The dedication, with which 
I am acquainted, fully justifies this reference, and flatly contra- 
dicts the testimony of Hume respecting the perplexed and bom- 
bast composition which he imputes to Dr. Gauden. Laing's Hist, 
of Scot iii. 405, &c. That my readers may form some judg- 
ment for themselves on this point of taste, I will present 
them with an extract from the Icon Basilike, and with one of 
Charles's papers written in reply to Mr. Henderson. 

" But here honour and justice, due to my successors, forbid 
me to yield to such a total alienation of that power from them, 
which civillity and duty (no less than justice and honour) should 
have forbad them to have asked of me. For, although I can be 
content to eclipse my owne beams to satisfy their fears, who think 
that they must needs be scorched or blinded if I should shine in 
the full lustre of kingly power, wherewith God and the laws have 
invested me •> yet I will never consent to put out the sun of so- 
vereignty to all posterity and succeeding kings ; whose just reco- 
ver)' of their rights from unjust usurpations and extortions shall 
never be prejudiced or obstructed by any act of mine; which 
indeed would not be more injurious to succeeding kings than to 
my subjects; whom I desire to leave in a condition not wholly 
desperate for the future ; so as by law to be ever subjected to 
those many factious distractions which must needs follow the 
many-headed Hydra of government; which, as it makes a show 
to the people to have more eyes to foresee, so I hey will find it 
hath more mouths too which must be satisfied : and (at best) it 
hath rather a monstrosity than any thing of perfection beyond 
that of right monarchy; where counsel may be in many as the 
senses, but th© supreme power can be but in one as the head. 

" Happily, when men have tried the horrors and malignant 
influence which will certainly follow my inforced darkness and 
eclipse, (occasioned by the interposition and shadow of that 
body, which as the moon receiveth its chiefest light from me) 
they will at length more esteem and welcome the restored glory 
and blessing of the sun's light." Icon Bas. p. 63, 64. 



LITE OF MILTON. 34? 

lion, let me mention that, on his appoint- 

His Majesty sjirst Paper. 

" Mr. Henderson, 

" I know very well what a great disadvantage it 
is for me to maintain an argument of divinity with so able and 
learned a man as yourself, it being your, not my profession) 
which really was the cause that made me desire to hear some 
learned man argue my opinion with you, of whose abilities I 
might be confident, that I should not be led into an error, for 
want of having all which could be said, layed open unto me : for, 
indeed, my humour is such, that I am still partial for that side 
which I imagine suffers for the weakness of those that maintain it, 
always thinking that equal champions would cast the balance on 
the other part: yet since that you (thinking that it will save time) 
desire to go another way, I shall not contest with you in it; but 
treating you as my physician, give you leave to take your own 
way of cure ; only I thought fit to warn you, lest if you (not I) 
should be mistaken in this, you would be fain (in a manner) to 
begin anew. 

" Then know that from my infancy I was blest with the 
King my father's love, which, I thank God, was an un valuable 
happiness to me all his days; and among all his cares for my 
education his chief was to settle me right in religion; in the 
true knowledge of which, he made himself so eminent to all 
the world, that I am sure none can call in question the bright- 
ness of his fame in that particular, without showing their own 
ignorant base malice: he it was, who laid in me the grounds 
of Christianity, which to this day I have been constant in ; so 
that whether the worthiness of my instructor be considered 
or the not few years that I have been settled in my principles, 
it ought to be no strange thing, if it be found no easy work 
to make me alter them : and the rather, that hitherto, I have 
(according to Saint Paul's rule, Rom. xiv. 22) been happy in 
( not condemning myself, in that thing which I allow:' thus 



348 LITE OF MILTOtf. 

ment to the office of Latin Secretary, Mil- 
having shewed you how, it remains to tell you what I believe in 
relation to these present miserable distractions. 

'• No one thing made me more reverence the reformation of 
my mother, the Church of England, than that it was done (ac- 
cording to the Apostle's defence, Acts xxiv. 18) ' neither with 
multitude, nor with tumult,' but legally and orderly, and by 
those whom I conceive to have only the reforming power j 
which with many other inducements, made me always confi- 
dent that the work was very perfect as to essentials, of which 
number church government being undoubtedly one, I put no 
question but that would have been likewise altered if there 
had been cause ; which opinion of mine was soon turned into 
more than a confidence, when I perceived that in this parti- 
cular (as I must say of all the rest) we retained nothing but 
according as it was deduced from the apostles to be the constant 
universal custom of the primitive church j and that it was 
of such consequence, as by the alteration of it we should de- 
prive ourselves of a lawful priesthood, and then, how the 
sacraments can be duly administered, is easy to judge : these 
are the principal reasons, which make me believe that bishops 
are necessary for a church, and I think sufficient for me (if I 
had no more) not to give my consent for their expulsion out of 
England: but I have another obligation, that to my particular 
is a no less tie of conscience, which is, my * coronation oath : 
now if (as S. Paul saith, Rom. xiv. 23.) ' He that doubteth is 
damned if he eat,' what can I expect, if I should, not only 
give way knowingly to my people's sinning, but likewise be 
perjured my self? ' 

" Now consider, ought I not to <e keep my self from pre- 
sumptuous sins?' and you know who says, ' What doth it profit 
a man, though he should gain the whole world, and lose his own 
soul ? Wherefore my constant maintenance of episcopacy in Eng- 

* This coronation oath, unhappily misunderstood, has since 
obstructed the accomplishment of some just and beneficial 

measures. 



LIPE OF MILTON. 349 

ton removed in the first instance to a lodg- 
ing in the house of one Thompson at Char- 
ing-Cross, and afterwards to apartments in 
Scotland-yard. Here his wife produced her 
third child, a son, who 'died in his infancy 
on the 16th of March 1650; and in 1652 our 
author shifted his residence to Petty France, 
where he occupied for eight years, till the 
crisis of the Restoration, a handsome house, 
opening into St. James's park and adjoining 
to the mansion of lord Scudamore. 

No sooner had Milton finished his mas- 
terly reply to the posthumous work, as it 
was then generally considered, of the late 
King's, than he was again called upon to 
enter the lists as the assertor of the Com- 
monwealth of England: but he was now op- 
posed to a more formidable antagonist, and 
was to contend on a far more ample field. 

land, (where there was never any other government since Chris- 
tianity was in this kingdom,) methinks should be rather com- 
mended than wondered at ; my conscience directing me to main- 
tain the laws of the land; which being only my endeavours at 
this time, I desire to know of you, what warrant there is in the 
word of God for subjects to endeavour to force their King's con- 
science? or to make him alter laws against his will? If this be 
not my present case, I shall be glad to be mistaken} or, if my 
judgment in religion hath been misled all this time, I shall be 
willing to be better directed: till when you mast excuse me to 
be constant to the grounds which the King my father taught me. 
Newcastle, May 2Q, 1646. " C. R." 



350 LITE OF MILTON 

His refutation of the Icon Basilikfe had been 
confined nearly within the pale of his own 
country: but the powers of his mind were 
now to be exhibited to Europe, and the 
whole circle of the civilized and christian 
community was to witness his triumph or his 
defeat. Charles, the son of the deceased mo- 
narch, eager to blend his own with the ge- 
neral cause of kings and desirous perhaps 
of evincing by the same act the fervor of 
his filial piety, determined on engaging the 
abilities of some great literary character to 
urge his appeal to the world against the vic- 
torious enemies of his house; and, for the 
accomplishment of his purpose, the voice of 
fame immediately directed his attention to 
Salmasius, at that time an honorary professor 
in the university of Leyden. 

Claudius Salmasius, or z Claude de Sau- 
maise, was of an honourable, or, as it has 
been termed, a noble family seated near the 
town of Semur h in the old province of La 
Bourgogne, of the parliament of which his 
father was a member. From his mother he 

* The orthography of this celebrated scholar's name fluctuates 
between " Saumaise," and " Soumaize." By his friend Sarrau 
it is written in the former mode; and by Vorstius in his Eloge 
funebre in the latter. 

h Now in the Department of Cote d'Or. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 351 

contracted a strong bias to the religious 
principles of the protestants; and an extra- 
ordinary proficiency in literature, at an early 
period of his life, soon advanced him to a 
foremost place among the eminent scholars 
of that age, the Casaubons, the Gothofreds, 
the Graters and the De Thous. The vast eru- 
dition and the superior critical acumen which 
he displayed in some of his publications, 
in his treatise " De lingud Hellenistic^,," 
and particularly in his large work, the " Pli- 
nianae exercitationes in Solinum," so in- 
creased and propagated his renown that dif- 
ferent powers are said to have contested for 
the honour of his residence in their states. 
The Pope, the Venetians, and the two suc- 
cessive governors of his own country, Rich- 
lieu and Mazarin, attempted to fix him, as 
it is affirmed, in their service by the most 
liberal offers: but, preferring principle to in- 
terest and independence to promotion, he de- 
clined these inviting prospects, and resigned 
himself to the unrestrained indulgence of his 
own literary and religious inclinations. The 
papacy and the whole fabric of the hie- 
rarchy had been made the objects of his vehe- 
ment attack; and now, in the full pride of 
his reputation, with the substantial enjoy- 
ment of a pension from the government, he 



352 LIFE OF MILTON. 

was reposing in the bosom of a protestant 
republic, when his assistance was courted by 
the letters and the presents ' of the English 
prince. 

It had been well for the professor if on 
this occasion he had not relinquished that 
wise and virtuous abstinence which had for- 
merly regulated his conduct. But when a 
king sued to be his client, and the cause 
of sovereigns to be supported by his pen, 
the appeal to his vanity was too powerful to 
be resisted, and, in an hour the most inau- 
spicious to his future fame and happiness, 
he undertook the defence of prelacy, roy- 
alty, and Charles. 

The result of this engagement, a bulky 
volume entitled " Defensio Regia pro Carolo 
primo ad Carol um secundum," made its ap- 
pearance before the conclusion of l649> and 
is reported to have generally disappointed the 
expectation of the learned/ The work, which 



' A hundred jacobuses accompanied the prince's application. 

k The inconsistency and venal accommodation, of which it 
convicted its author, were unquestionably distressing to some, 
who were personally attached to him. Claude Sarrau, one of 
his confidential friends, a learned member of the parliament 
of Paris, having previously warned him of the danger and 
impropriety of the undertaking, expostulated very freely and 
strongly with him on his conduct in its execution. Not hav- 
ing the epistles of Sarrau, an edition of which was published 



LIFE OF MILTON. 353 

Salmasius had presumptuously undertaken, 

by Burman, immediately to refer to, I shall content myself 
with an extract respecting them from the learned and accurate 
Dr. Birch. (Account of the Life and writings of Milton., 
p. xxxiv.) 

" Claudius Sarravius, counsellor in the parliament of Paris, 
and an intimate friend of Salmasius, in a letter to him dated at 
Paris, Feb. 18, 1(350, expresses his surprise that he should write 
in the preface to his Defensio with so much zeal in defence of 
the bishops Df England, when he had in another work of his 
' De Presbyteris et Episcopis,' printed at Leyden 1641, in Svo. 
under the fictitious name of Wallo Messalinus, attacked them 
with the utmost acrimony ; which he observes might expose 
him to the imputation of a time-server, who paid no regard to 
truth itself. *■ Hoc sane dicent esse rcy xwfw $s\sveiv potius 
quam dj dXrfisia GrelQeo-Qou.* And in another letter, dated 
Paris, March 5, of the same year, he reminds him of this in- 
consistency, which would make his sincerity questioned. * De 
necessitate episcopates Anglicani quod obiter dixeras in prsefa- 
tione, ut jam monui, fortius adhuc urges ipso opere, contra 
dictata Wallonis Me-ssalini j quod tibi vitio vertetur, diceturque 
te calidum et frigidum eodem ex ore efflare, nee generositati tuae 
id convenire existimabitur.' Salmasius having wrote an answer 
to Sarravius upon this point, the latter replied to him thus in a 
letter dated March 12, 1650. ( Te ergo habemus reum faten- 
tem : sive enim tempori servias sive causar, nobis perinde est. 
Atqui dicebatur antea te &'r$&itlw -v-Sv \yzw, qui ne ipsi quidem 
Jovi, Termini in modum, cederet. Prseterea credo non licere 
Advocato vel Begio, in causa domini sui, aliter dicere publice 
quam privatim loquatur et sentiat: quemadmodum non sunt 
diversse leges, quibus domi ■utimivr, ab illis, juxta quas in foro 
placita decernuntur. At scripsisti, inquis, ex imperio. Ergo 
potest tibi imperari ut sententiam mutes: Epictetus tamen tuus 
docet hoc esse ruov s<p vjpTv, atque ita esse in potestate nostra ut 
invitis non eripiatur. Sed haec ingrata omitto, &c. ' We have 
cow your own confession of your fault; for it is the same thing 
to us, whether you adapt yourself to the times or to the cause. 

2 A 



354 LIFE OP MILTON. 

he was not perhaps qualified to execute; and 
he might at length be made sensible that, with 
the tenacious memory, the quick combina- 
tion, the acute and microscopic vision of the 
scholar and the critic, a man might be des- 

But before this, it was said, that you was a man of an inflexible 
disposition, who, like the god Terminus, would not give way to 
Jove himself. Besides, I am of opinion that even a king's advo- 
cate ought not, in his master's cause, to speak in public differently 
from what he speaks and thinks in private; as the laws Avhich 
. we use in private life are not at all different from those, upon 
which decrees are made in courts of judicature. But you 
wrote, you say, " by command." And was it possible for any 
commands to prevail on you to change y ur opinion? Your 
favourite Epictetus tells us, that our opinion is one of those 
things in our power, and so far in our power, that nothing can 
take it away from us without our consent." 

I have Sarrau's Epistles now in my hand : but I rind Dr. 
Birch's extracts from them so correct as to make it unnecessary 
for me either to write a new note or to alter my former one. I 
have only supplied the whole of his last citation, that the transla- 
tion may be verified t»y the original. Sarrau was a man of much 
learning, talents, and integrity. His ability and erudition are 
unquestionably proved by his letters, and his probity — by his 
remonstrances against the inconsistency of his friend, Salmasius : 
for whom his respect was nearly boundless. With Sarrau it was 
amicus Socrates sed magis arnica Veritas. The distich, which he 
wrote under a portrait of Salmasius, will bear ample testimony to 
the exalted opinion, which the Parisian Counsellor entertained of 
the Leyden professor. 

Quantum scire hominem Divina Potentia vellet, 
Ostendit terris, Salmasiumciue dedit. 

The estimable Sarrau died of a fever at Paris on Easter Eve in 
1651. [See Burm. Syll. iii. 266.] 



LIFE OP MILTON, 355 

titute of that span and grasp of mind which 
are requisite to wield the large and com- 
plex system of political wisdom. There is cer- 
tainly a pervading littleness throughout the 
whole of " the Royal Defence." Its author, 
like Martha in the Gospel, " is troubled 
about many things/' and seems to be over- 
whelmed with trifles. For argument he fre- 
quently applies to frivolous etymology: he 
accumulates quotations, suggested to him by 
the officiousness of his memory, very often 
without judgment or felicity; and he puts 
together his unequal and ill-assorted mate- 
rials without the arrangement and the plan 
of a master. After all however, " the Royal 
Defence" is no contemptible production. It 
amasses nearly all that can be obtained on 
the subject: in its management it is some- 
times skilful 1 and artificial, as in its execu- 

1 In the following passages may be distinguished the height- 
ening and the aggravation of a masterly hand. 

:( Si agendi modus inspiciatur, plurimi non sicca morte 
reges ad generum Cereris, ut cum poeta loquar, descenderunt. 
Aut gladius privati parricidas aliquem luce privavit, aut miles 
ab aliquo procerum subornatus vitse principis insidias fecit, aufe 
potio veneni alium exanimavit, aut careens mala mansio pae- 
dore et fame alium cruciatum sustulit, alium in carcere carni- 
fex strangulavit. Sed quis unquam audivit, quis legit, regem 
legitimum, haereditarium regnum possidentem, Christianum, 
reformatum, accusatum a suis subjectis, causam capitis dicere 
coactum, condemnatum, securi percussum? Causa etiam com- 



356 LIFE 01' MILTON. 

tion it is sometimes happy and even elo- 
quent. It presents us with arguments gene- 
rally subtle and specious; and with diction, 
occasionally indeed poor and debased with 
modern idioms, but on the whole perspicu- 

missae in regia persona caedis aut summae sceleris detrahit aut 
ad summam addit, quod minus aut magis sceleratum existimari 
queat quod actum est. Si per tumultum aliquis interemptus 
est militarem, si per seditionem popularem, si per factionem 
optimatum extinctus, non alia causa qnaeri solet quam quae ocu- 
lis patet, tumultusj factionis, seditionis. Furor iraque rebel- 
Hum mentes praecipites egit in tale facinus. Irati milites ob 
gravem militiam^ infensi populi ob tributorum onera, proceres vel 
odio, vel metu, vel studio dominandi incitati in regem conspirant. 
Causa furoris in his omnibus partes snas agit. Post factum eos 

qui fecere plerumque pcenitentia capit. 

" Non rebellio concitati populi ea simplex fuit, subita se- 
ditione et factione vel procerum vel militum ad regem suum 
occidendum inflammata. Torserunt prius variis crucibus ac 
morte gravioribus suppliciis, quem tandem ignominioso et ulti- 
mo conficcrent. De carcere in carcerem eum traduxerunt, 
custodiis saspe mutatis, saepe novaiis, libertatis interdum spe 
ostensa, interdum et restitutionis per pactionem inter partes 
faciendam. Dum de hac tractatur, et cum jam rex omnia pro- 
misisset quae ab ipso postulabantur, repente totum negotium 
disturbatur. E carcere res. educitur, in regiam adducitur, coram 
judicibus selectis sistitur, causam dicere tanquam reus cogitur, 
non respondens condemnatur., secari percutitur. Sed quo modo? 
Eo ceite modo quo nullus unquam rex supplicium capitis passus 
memoratur. Vt latro, ut sicarius,, ut parricida, ut proditor, ut 
tyrannus ante domum suam, id est regiam suam, populo suo spec- 
tante, infami pegmati impositus, inter duos carninces constitutes 
et quidem larvatos^ quasi ad rem faceret hoc in duobus his serva- 
tum esse ut personati starent, cum tot alii carninces ore non tecto, 
palam locum supplicii armis circumdatum custodirent, quot nempe 
pedites et equites armati circumstabant." 



LIFE OF MILTON. 357 

ous and pure. It satisfies us, in short, that its 
author was no common man; and it would 
prove him, without the testimony of his 
other works, not to have been the fortuitous 
possessor of that high reputation which he 
enjoyed. 

But the circumstance, which will princi- 
pally recommend this work of Salmasius's to 
a numerous party in the present day, is the 
vivid recollection, which it forcibly awakens, 
of some of the political writings of the late 
Mr. Burke. The same dark arsenal of lan- 
guage seems to have supplied the artillery, 
which in the seventeenth century was aimed 
at the government of England, and in the 
close of the eighteenth at that of France; and 
many of those doctrines," 1 which disgust us 

m " Dicet fanatica natio, ita in regem a" populo transire (po- 
testatem) ut ad popalum possit redire, immo et debeat, quan- 
docunque hoc velit, aut si ita expedire judicet bono ac saluti 
reipublicse. Atqui salus reipublicae semper postulat, ut data k 
populo principi potestas nunquam ad populum reverta.tur, qui 
ita earn deponit, ut principem semel ilia donatum non privare 
possit in posterum dato imperio. Quippe cum ad salulem po- 
puli reperta sint omnia genera gubernationis quibus respublica 
constituitur et administratur, boni pubiici maxime interest ut 
potestas a populo regi semel concessa et donata, nunquam 
revocetur. Nisi enim hoc esset, et si pro lege id observaretur, 
ut quotiescunque populo placuisset, imperium regi, quem ele- 
gisset, ablatum ad populum rediret, nulla pax unquam firma 
in republica sperari posset,, sed ad singula momenta quies ejus 



358 LIFE O* MILTON. 

with their naked deformity in the pages of 
the Leyden professor, have been withdrawn 
from our detestation under an embroidered 
and sparkling veil by the hand of the British 
politician. When Salmasius calls upon the 
monarchs, and indeed upon all the well insti- 
tuted republics, or, in other words, the regu- 
lar governments of Europe to extirpate the 
fanatic and the parricide English, — the pests 
and the monsters of Britain, we must neces- 
sarily be reminded of Mr. Burke's crusading 
zeal against the revolutionists of France; and 
be persuaded that he only blows the trumpet 
bequeathed to him by the antagonist of Mil- 
ton, and sullied with the venal breath which 
was once purchased by Charles. Unques- 
tionable resemblance is to be discovered in 
* 4 the Royal Defence" to those pieces of Mr. 
Burke's which respect the French revolution; 
and if the former were to be translated, (but 
who would submit to so ungrateful a labour?) 
the English reader would be less struck with 
the novelty of the latter; and more disposed 
to assent to what was asserted by the wise 
man more than three thousand years ago, 
that " there is no new thing under the sun." 

turbaretur, omnia seditionibus et factionibus arderent, fomitibus 
aubinde in faces ad totius status conflagrationem suppeditandis/* 
Def. Reg. p. 202, 



LIFE OF MILTOIST. 359 

On the causes of this obvious likeness I will 
not presume to offer an opinion. Similar 
thoughts might be suggested by similar sub- 
jects, and the same passions, however ex- 
cited, might naturally rush into the same 
channel of intemperate expression: or the 
expatiating mind of Mr. Burke might range 
even the moors of Salmasius to batten on 
their coarse produce; and, finding them re- 
plenished with bitter springs, might be in- 
duced to draw from them to feed the luxuri- 
ancy of his invective." 

n For the amusement of the curious reader, I will transcribe 
a few passages from Salmasius's work, to prove the resemblance 
which I have asserted ; and at the same time to show that Mil- 
tori's severity did not exceed the provocation. 

P. 5. " Hac ratione quod in Anglia factum facinus cum hor- 
rore accepimus, quia exemplo caret, tanto minus ignoscendum, 
magisque adeo execrandum, curandumque enixius ne hoc ipso 
tempore penetret ad plures et ne pro exemplo sit perniciem 
trahente veniens in sevum. Digni, itaque, omni odio et insec- 
tatione qui fecerunt, dignissimique porro quos flamma, fer-roque 
persequantur non solum quoquot sunt in Europa reges et 
principes jure regio imperantes,, sed etiam omnes magistratus 
omnesque adeo republic2e bene constitute et moratae. Hsec 
enim fanaticorum factio non sola regum solia appetere gestit, 
sed omnes potestates quas ipsa non fecerit conatur subvertere, 
cum nihil aliud nisi mutationem captet et cupiat, non solum 
in republica sed in ecclesia cum perpetua novandi libidine, qua 
sibi imperandi omnibus, nullique parendi licentiam adstruat. — ■ 
Non solum regnorum eversionem, sed etiam legum eversionem 
sibi cordi esse satis ostendunt," &c. 

P. 6. " Vocari illi se quidem libertatis publics custodes, in 



360 .LIFE OF MILTON. 

But whatever might be the intrinsic me- 

actis publicis postulant. JEque bono jure latro qui viatorem 
jpoliasset se crumenae ejus custodem appellari vellet," &c. 

P. 10. " Hoc * alicui Cornelio Syllae, hoc Julio Caesari licu- 
isse, principibus suae aetatis viris, generis et virtutis merito, 
fortasse minus intolerandum. At idem Manios al'iquos, terrae 
filios, vix domi nobiles, vix suis notos licere sibi credidisse qui9 
ferat?" 

P. 11. tf At istoe sicariorum viles et impurae animae optima- 
fum consessum aboleveruntj locum ei nullum in parte procu- 
randae reipublicae esse voluerunt, ad plebem in speciem totum 
regendi jus transtulerunt, sed revera sibi vindicarunt, id est 
paucis e faece plebis ortis reservarunt, iramo vel uni nebuloni, 
fanatico, homini obscuro, turbarum omnium quae per tot annos 
Angliam dilacerarunt, autori, incentori, promotori." 

P. 23. " Non odio regis, non metu, non criminibus ejus ad- 
ducti de eo toll end o cogitarunt, sed quia reges ipsi esse volue- 
runt. Nulli parere, et omnibus imperare jam pridem didice- 
rant: hasc eorum disciplina; hasc secta, Multorum annorum 
molitionibus, machinationibus, meditationibus ad hoc detes- 
tandum et horrendum facinus patrandum sese compararunt. 
Ne casu putemus in execrationem omnium incurrisse, hoc vo- 
luerunt," &c. 

P* 25. " Tetrae istae belluae et molossis suis ferociores.'* 

P. 35. " Saeculum certe nostrum hanc notam ex eo sibi in- 
ustam nunquam eluet, quod homines tulerit, quibus cmdelitate 
et immanitate pares nulla retro saecula tulerunt. Natio ipsa 
Anglicana, quae talia monstra produxit, maculam hanc sibi eo- 
nomine imprimendam nunquam deleverit." 

P. 40. " Ea est harum pestium doctrina, ut etiam audeant 
amrmare se solos sapere et recte sentire — — dum regum coro- 
nas pedibus conculcant, sceptra confringunt, thronos destruunt, 
paludamsnta conscindunt sed etiam exitiale hoc dogma im- 

* The overthrow of the established government : neither SaL 
masius nor Mr. Burke seems to object to this measure, provided 
that it be accomplished by noble hands. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 36l 

rit of this defence of Charles, it was elevated 

bibet (posteritas,) nisi obviam prompte eatur. Nam vel prop- 
ter hanc impiam doctrinam, non solum ex omnibus regnis, ubi- 
cunque invenientur, exturbandi sunt, sed omnia etiam regna 
conspirare debent, ut ex eo regno quod intoleranda tyrannide 
oppressum nunc occupant ejiciantur." 

P. S5. ft Si credimus novis evangelistis, novitiisque Sanctis, 
doctrinae parricidalis et Anti-Christianae autoribus, rex minister 
est populi et servus. Non bella sua, sed populi gerit. Populi 

creatura est, ut vas fictile figuli. &c. &c. inde sequeretur 

in democratic, quae populi principatum agnoscit, populum vice 
versa servire debere. Sed cui serviet ? cerivisiae coctoribus, 
cerdonibus, aerariis fabris, et aliis ejusmodi furfuraceis tyran- 
nis," &c. 

P. 97. <c Quam adversis frontibus pugnat haec veterum doc- 
trina Christiana cum ista fanaticorum, vere Anti-christiana, quae 
sancit populum esse figulum regis, regem autem vas esse a populo 
fictum ut figulo suo ?** 

P. 195. <( Haec est fanaticorum Angliae de regibus et regendi 
diversis generibus in republica sententia et doctrina quae omnia 
ad populum revocat ut ad fontem et originem totius potestatis 
et autoritatis quae leges rogat et abrogat, quae pacem et bellum 
sancit, quae fcedera firmat, quae religionem dirigit, ecclesiamque 
cum republica regit. — Sed quicquid illi perditi homines dicunt 
ac docent de populari administratione, cui omnia vindicant gu- 
bernationis genera, ad populum decipiendum pertinent, cui fu- 
cum hoc modo faciunt: nihil enim minus revera cogitant, quam 
ut populum ipsum populis imperio regendis destinent, nihil 
etiam minus praestant. Forma regiminis quam introduxere plane 
nova est et priscis inaudita," &c. 

P. 323. fC Nunc tanta rerum nominumque permutatio viget 
apud illos sectarios, ut servus pro domino exeat, dominus pro 
servo: tyranni multi pro rege uno legitimo imperent. Hgav- 

ag^ia, cum dva.%yix sit mixta. Respublica consistat sine liber- 

tate; religio sine fide; enthusiasmus sine veritatej ecclesia sine 
4isciplina. Omnia in ea inversa ac perversa : omnia monstruosa, 
capite in pedes dejecto, pedibus in caput erectis. Infirma sum- 



362 LIFE OF MILTON". 

by the name of Salmasius too highly to the 
notice of Europe to be overlooked by the 
government of England. The Council im- 
mediately perceived the necessity of reply- 
ing to it; and as immediately discovered the 
powers adequate to the occasion in their se- 
cretary, Milton. He was present, as he tells 
us, when the question was agitated, and the 
unanimous voice of the meeting committed 
to him the charge of repelling the acrimo^ 
nious and mercenary attack. His compli- 
ance with the honourable requisition was 
instant; and inattentive to the suggestions 
of his friends, who were fearful of his repu- 
tation, committed against so renowned an 
adversary; undeterred by the remonstrance 
of his physicians, who predicted that the loss 
of his sight would be the infallible result of 
his labour; and unrestrained by the dissua- 
sion of his bad health, which allowed him to 
compose only at intervals and with hourly 
interruptions, he persevered in the duty 

mis, dextra laevis, recta pravis, religiosa profanis mutata. Merum 
denique omnis generis confusionum chaos. Hie status est regni 
Artglicani sub dira et immani Independentium tyrannide." 

P. 365. " Pactio, quam fingunt inter regem et subditos in- 
tercedere, non minus futilis est. Certe nulla est in imperiis vi 
armorum partis, qualia sunt hodie ferme omnia." 

P. 269. (l Sed belluee et feri molossi hominum facie et ha- 
bitu/' &c. 



LIEE OF MILTON. 363 

which he had undertaken ; and, with princi- 
ple strong within his heart and the attrac- 
tion of glory bright before his view, he pro- 
duced early in the year 1651 that noble 
acquittal of his engagement to the Coun- 
cil, " °The Defence of the People of Eng- 
land." 

To speak of this composition in terms 
of too high praise would be difficult for its 
greatest admirer. If, happily, it had been 
a little less embittered with personal invec- 
tive, and had withdrawn the two immediate 
combatants to a greater distance from our 
sight; if it had excluded every light and 
sportive sally from its pages, it would have 
approached very nearly to perfection, and 
would have formed one of the most able and 
satisfactory, the most eloquent and splendid 
defences of truth and liberty against sophis- 
try and despotism, which has ever been ex- 
hibited to the world. Its diction, pure spi- 
rited and harmonious, is the adequate organ 
of strong argument, manly sentiment, com- 
prehensive erudition, excursive fancy, and 
profound wisdom. By the laws of God, 
either written in our hearts or made the sub- 
jects of immediate revelation; by the testi- 

° Defensio pro Populo Anglicano contra Ciaudii Salmasii De- 
fensionem Regiam. 



364 life or MILTON. 

mony of all history, sacred and profane, the 
" Defence of the People of England" ascer- 
tains that political power properly emanates 
from the people, for whose good it must be 
exercised, and for whose good it may right- 
fully be resumed. On the narrowed ques- 
tion and with reference to the point more 
immediately at issue, the " Defence" strenu- 
ously asserts the ancient genealogy of Eng- 
lish freedom and traces it from its British 
origin, through its Saxon and Norman line- 
age, to the times in which Charles suffered 
and the commonwealth of England was esta- 
blished. During this whole period the " De- 
fence" proves that the existence of the ulti- 
mate sovereignty of the people was ascer- 
tained either by the electing or the deposing 
of the monarch, or by its acknowledgment in 
the compacts of the more potent possessors 
of the throne. From the Saxon times is de- 
monstrated the existence of a supreme legis- 
lative assembly including the representa- 
tives of the commons, by which the conduct 
of the executive power was controlled and to 
which the chief magistrate was at all times 
responsible. 

The author is unquestionably too severe 
in his treatment of Charles, and we are fa- 
tigued with the perpetual recurrence of his 



LIFE OF MILTON. 365 

invective against his immediate antagonist: 
but into the first of these errors he was be- 
trayed by the exaggerated praise with which 
the departed Monarch was now lifted into 
popular favour; and for the second he may 
find some excuse in the abusive and inso- 
lent language, hurled by a presumptuous fo- 
reigner against the government and the peo- 
ple of England. In this instance however 
of management, or in this indulgence of in- 
temperance, Milton has shewn himself to be 
injudicious; and, like other controversialists 
who have accommodated their works to the 
passions and the prejudices of the day, he 
has abandoned the more permanent for the 
more instant and impressive effect. In a con- 
test, like this in question, it may be of import- 
ance, as Bayle acutely observes, to get the 
laughers on our side; and the aggravated 
censures, with the pointed personalities which 
now form the principal blemishes of the 
H Defence of the People of England/' con- 
stituted at the time of its publication one of 
the chief causes of its power and popularity. 
No mean of teasing the adversary is omitted 
in this composition : his venality and ac- 
commodating pliancy of opinion are even 
made the subjects of a sportive sally in iam- 
bics. 



366 LIFE OF MILTON. 

ie Quis expedivit Salmasio suam hundredam; 
<c Picamque docuit nostra verba conari?" 
" Magister artis venter 5" et Jacobaei 

Centum, exulantis viscera p marsupii regis. 
ec Quod si dolosi spes refulserit numrai," 

Ipse Antichrist! qui modo primatum Papae 

Minatus uno est dissipare sufflatu 
" Cantabit" ultro Cardinalitium " melos."i 

Who to our English tuned Salmasius' throat? 
Who taught the pye to speak our words by rote ? 
A hundred golden Jameses did the feat: 
He learn'd to prattle, — for he wish'd to eat. 
Let the false glare of gold allure his hopej 
And he, whose stormy voice late shook the Pope, 
And threaten'd Antichrist with speedy death, 
Will sooth the conclave with his tuneful breath. 

But the reader may expect a graver spe- 
cimen of this celebrated work; and I will 
transcribe for him the forcible and eloquent 
address with which it concludes. 

" Hactenus, quod initio institueram ut 
meorum civium facta egregia contra insa- 
mam et lividissimam furentis sophistae rabi- 
em et domi et foris defenderem, jusque po- 
puli commune ab injusto regum dominatu 
assererem, non id quidem regum odio sed 
tyrannorum, Deo bene juvante videor jam 
mihi absolvisse: neque ullum sine responso 

p The classical reader need not be informed that these lines 
are a parody on the prologue, of Persius to his satires. 
iP.W. v. 100. 



LIFE OE MILTON. 36*7 

vel argumentum, vel exemplum, vel testimo- 
nium ab adversario allatum sciens praeter- 
misi, quod quidem firmitatis in se quicquam, 
aut probationis vim ullam habere videretur; 
in alteram fortasse partem culpae propior, 
qudd saepiusculk ineptiis quoque ejus et ar- 
gutiis tritissimis, quasi argumentis, respon- 
dendo, id iis tribuisse videar quo dignae non 
erant. Unum restat, et fortasse maximum, 
ut vos quoque, 6 cives, adversarium hunc 
vestrum ipsi refutetis: quod nuM alia ra- 
tione video posse fieri, nisi omnium male- 
dicta vestris optimfe factis exuperare perpe- 
tu(^> contendatis. Vota vestra et preces ar- 
dentissimas Deus, cum servitutis baud uno 
genere oppressi ad eum confugistis, benignfe 
exaudiit. Quae duo in vM hominum mala 
sank maxima sunt et virtuti damnosissima, 
tyrannis et superstitio, iis vos gentium pri- 
mos gloriosfe liberavit; earn animi magni- 
tudinem vobis injecit ut devictum armis ves- 
tris et dedititium regem judicio inclyto judi- 
care, et condemnatum punire, primi morta- 
lium non dubitaretis. Post hoc facinus tarn 
illustre, nihil humile aut angustum, nihil non 
magnum atque excelsum et cogitare et facere 
fdebebitis. Quam laudem ut assequamini, 
hac sola incedendum est via, si ut hostes bello 
domuistis, ita ambitionem, avaritiam, opes, 



368 LIFE OF MILTON. 

et secundarum rerum corruptelas, quae subi- 
gunt caeteras gentes hominum, ostenderitis 
posse vos etiam inermes media in pace om- 
nium mortalium fortissime debellare; si, quam 
in repellenda servitute forlitudinem praesti- 
tistis, earn in libertate conservanda justitiam, 
temperantiam, moderationem praestiteritis. 
His solis argumentis et testimoniis evincere 
potestis, non esse vos illos, quos hie probris 
insequitur, " Perduelles, latrones, sicarios, 
parricidas, fanaticos :" non vos ambitionis 
aut alieni invadendi studio, non seditione, 
aut pravis ullis cupiditatibus, non amentia 
aut furore percitos regem trucidasse, sed 
amove libertatis, religionis, justitiae, hones- 
tatis, patriae denique charitate acctnsos ty- 
rannum puniisse. Sin autem, (quod, bone 
Deus, ne unquam siveris,) aliter in animum 
induxeritis, si in bello fortes, in pace turpes 
eritis, qui manifestum sensistis numen vobis 
tarn propitium, hostibus tarn grave, neque 
exemplo tarn insigni et memorando ante 
oculos posito, Deum vereri et justitiam co- 
lere didiceritis; quod ad me attinet, con- 
cedam sane et fatebor, neque enim potero 
negare ea omnia, quae nunc maledici et 
mendaces de vobis pessimfe aut loquuntur 
aut sentiunt, vera esse: vosque multo ira- 
tiorem brevi tempore experturi estis Deum, 



LITE OF MILTON 369 

qu&m aut infensum inimici vestri, aut vos 
benign um et faventem et paternum, prse 
<?aeteris omnibus terrarum orbis gentibus ho- 
diernis, experti estis." q 

" So far, with God's assistance, have I ac- 
complished my original purpose of defend- 
ing, both at home and abroad, the proud 
achievements of my countrymen against the 
insane and malignant fury of a frantic so- 
phist; and of vindicating, (as the enemy, 
not of kings but of tyrants,) the general rights 
of the subject from the unjust despotism of 
the prince. Nor have I consciously left un- 
answered a single argument, instance, or evi- 
dence adduced by my antagonist, which ap- 
peared to possess the smallest portion either 
of strength or conclusiveness, having rather 
perhaps inclined to the opposite fault of re- 
plying too frequently even to his irrelevant 
and trivial sophistries; and of treating them, 
as arguments, with a degree of attention of 
which they were undeserving. One thing 
alone, but perhaps the most important, re- 
mains,— that you also, my countrymen, 
should yourselves unite with me in the con- 
futation of your enemy: and this, in my opi- 
nion, can no otherwise be effected than by a 

* P. W. y. 194. 

2 a 



370 LIFE OF MILTON. 

perpetual effort on your part to rise above 
his calumnies and to crush them with your 
virtues. To your ardent vows and supplica- 
tions the Almighty indulgently listened when, 
under the yoke of your double servitude, 
you sued to him for deliverance. You are 
the first among the nations whom he has glo- 
riously rescued from the oppression of ty- 
ranny and superstition, those two mighty evils 
which are the most hostile to the perfection 
of man: to you, the first of the human race, 
did he impart the magnanimity to submit to 
the solemnity of a judicial trial, and, when 
legally found guilty, to punish with a just 
death your vanquished and captive king. 
After a deed so illustrious, nothing low or nar- 
row, nothing but what is great and exalted 
should enter into your thoughts and actions. 
To this lofty superiority of character you 
can rise only by showing that, as you have 
quelled your enemies in war so, with forti- 
tude equally unexampled, without arms and 
in profound peace, you can subdue ambition 
and avarice, the power of wealth and the 
corruption of prosperity which triumph over 
the rest of your species; and by exhibiting 
in the preservation of your freedom a degree 
of justice, temperance, and moderation propor- 
tioned to the valour which you have evinced 



LIFE OF MILTON. 371 

in its attainment. By these arguments and 
evidences alone can you satisfactorily prove 
that you are not, (as your calumniator af- 
firms,) " Rebels," " Robbers," " Ruffians/' 
" Parricides," and " Fanatics;" and that you 
have not under the impulse of ambition or 
of a wish to plunder, not incited by sedi- 
tion or by any depraved passions, not in a 
paroxysm of folly or of phrenzy murdered a 
king; but that, elevated and kindled with the 
love of liberty, of religion, of equity, of ho- 
nour, and of your country, you have inflicted 
punishment upon a tyrant. If however, 
(which God avert!) your projects and pur- 
poses be different; if, notwithstanding your 
signal experience of a Deity so propitious to 
yourselves and so destructive to your foes, 
after all your bravery in war you are resolved 
to be corrupt in peace, and, unaffected by 
the memorable and awful example before 
your eyes, to disdain (i to learn to do justice, 
and to walk humbly with your God" — for 
my part, I must indeed be constrained re- 
luctantly to acknowledge the truth of all 
those infamous charges against you which 
are now uttered or conceived by the slan- 
derers of your fame, and you will but too 
quickly feel the wrath of the Almighty in a 
much more afflicting degree than it has ever 



S72 LIFE OF MILTON. 

visited your enemies; or than you yourselves 
have ever experienced, beyond the other na- 
tions of modern times, his kind, indulgent, 
and paternal love. 3 



V r 



r I must in this place, assign a note to the vindication of 
Milton from an aspersion unwarily thrown on him by a most 
respectable prelate; and unhappily inserted into the biogra- 
phical compilation which is prefixed to the last edition of his 
poetical works. " It must not be omitted," says Mr. Todd,* 
" that Salmasius, in his Defensio Regia, had pressed hard 
upon his adversary in a particular point; and that Milton, to 
maintain the point, was tempted to put on the fragile armour 
of untruth." — A harsh imputation this on the warmest votary 
of principle and truth, who ever wielded the pen of contro- 
versy! — but let us proceed. — " A learned Prelate, in modern 
times, has detected this diminished brightness of Milton. 
' When Salmasius upbraided Cromwell's faction with the te- 
nets of the Brownists, the chosen advocate of that execrable 
faction," (Milton) " replied that, if they were Brownists, Lu- 
ther, Calvin, Bucer, Zui'nglius, and all the most celebrated theo- 
logians of the orthodox must be included in the same reproach. 
A grosser falsehood, as far as Luther, Calvin, and many others 
are concerned, never fell from the unprincipled pen of a party- 
writer. However sedition might be a part of the puritanic 
creed, the general faith of the reformers rejects the infamous al- 
liance." For this remark, Mr. Todd refers us to the appendix 
to Bishop Watson's sermon preached before the House of Lords, 
on Jan. 30, 1795. For this liberal and worthy prelate I feel 
very unfeigned respect; but I must protest against the rashness, 
for I cannot think it an intention to misrepresent, which has in- 
cited him to this violent paragraph. To refute the incautious 
charge nothing more can be necessary than the production of 
the passage in Milton's work to which the reference is made. 
It concludes the fifth chapter of the Defensio pro Populo Ar.gli- 

* Todd's Life of Milton, lxxx. 



fclFJfi O? MILTON. 573 

This great display of intellectual power 

«ano,"* and it stands independently of any thing which precedes 
it. " Quereris enim postremis hisce seculis discipline vigorem 
laxatum, reguiam corruptam," quod uni scilicet tyranno, cunctis 
legibus soluto, disciplinam omnem laxare, mores omnium cor- 
rumpere impune non liceat. Hanc doctrinam " Brunistas inter 
reformatos" introdaxisse ais. Ita Lutherus, Calvinus, Zuin- 
glius, Bucerus, et orthodoxorum quotquot celeberrimi theologi 
fuere, tuo judicio Brunistae sunt. Quo aequiore animo tua 
maledicta perferunt Angli, cum in ecclesise doctores praestan- 
tissimos, totamque adeo ecclesiam reformatam, iisdem prope 
contumeliis debacchari te audiunt." " You complain," ad- 
dressing himself to Salmasius, says Milton, " that in this last age 
the vigour of discipline is impaired and its right rule corrupted, 
because truly it is not in the power of one despot, released him- 
self from the controll of all law, to relax with impunity the ge- 
neral discipline and to corrupt the morals of all. This doctrine, 
as you say, was first introduced among the reformed by the 
Brownists: so that, by your decision, Luther, Calvin, Zui'nglius, 
Bucer, and all the most celebrated of the orthodox divines are 
included among the Brownists. The English therefore sup- 
port your calumnies with the greater equanimity, when they 
hear you thus furious in your invectives against the most admir- 
able doctors, and consequently against the body itself of the re- 
formed church." If we admit the premises of Milton, can we 
refuse our assent to his conclusion ? If to contend for liberty 
against the tyranny of a single person be the distinction of a 
Brownist, the first reformers w ere, beyond all question, Brown- 
ists, for one of the principal objects of their liberal and en- 
lightened contention was to break the despotism of the court of 
Rome. Milton asserts nothing but the truth; and he is justi- 
fied in bringing it forward by that part of his adversary's work 
to which he replies. The first reformers were not only stre- 
nuous in their opposition to the papal despotism, but were on 
all occasions warm advocates and supporters of the civil liberties 
of man. 

*P.W. V. 136. 



374 LIFE OF MILTON. 

was received with the plaudit of the world; 
and, as the author's name was not in any wide 
celebrity out of his own country, the general 
surprise was nearly equal to the general ad- 
miration. Congratulations and acknowledg- 
ments of respect poured in upon him from 
every quarter, and the scholars of Europe, 
actuated by a similar spirit with the spec- 
tators of the old Olympic games, threw gar- 
lands on the conqueror of Salmasius. On the 
publication of the " Defence of the People 
of England," all the embassadors in London, 
of whom perhaps the greater number were 
from crowned heads, discovered their sense 
of its merit by complimenting or visiting its 
author; and he was gratified by letters, re- 
plete with praise and with professions of 
esteem, from foreigners eminent for their ta- 
lents and erudition. 

Among these he seems to have been 
particularly pleased with the attentions of 
Leonard Philaras, a learned Athenian who 
had attained to high rank in Italy and was 
now employed by the Duke of Parma on 
an embassy to the court of Paris. Struck 
with the ability and spirit of Milton's com- 
position, this illustrious and liberal Greek 
sent a present of his portrait with a letter 
of panegyric to the defender of the Eng- 



LIFE OF MILTON. 375 

]ish commonwealth. On a visit, which Phi- 
laras soon afterwards made to England, 
his first object, (and indeed it seems to 
have been the leading object of his visit to 
our island,) was to wait upon Milton, then 
reduced to a state of total blindness; and 
mutual friendship was the consequence of 
their personal intimacy. When Philaras re- 
turned to Paris, he was induced by the cele- 
brity of Thevenot s the physician, particularly 
renowned at that time for his acquaintance 
with the diseases of the eye, to communicate 
a hope to Milton of the recovery of his sight. 
The two letters, in which our author ac- 
knowledges the first kindness and the subse- 
quent services of his Athenian friend, are too 
worthy of the reader's notice not to be sub- 
mitted to it. 

Clarissimo Vivo Leonardo Philarce Atheniemh 
Duels Parmensis ad Regem Gallia Legato. 

Benevolentiam erga me tuam, ornatis- 
sime Leonarde Philara, nee non etiam prse- 

s If we were desirous of paying Thevenot a high compliment, 
we should call him the Ware of the seventeenth century and 
of France. If the French physician actually possessed the skill 
and the benevolence of our admirable oculist,' he must hard 
been the ornament and the blessing of his age. 



3?6 LIFE OF MILTON. 

clarum de nostra pro P. A J Defensione ju- 
dicium, ex Uteris tuis ad dominum Auge- 
rium, virum apud nos in obeundis ab Mc 
republica legationibus fide eximia illustrem, 
partim ea de re scriptis cognovi : missam 
deinde salutem cum effigie atque elogio 
tuis sane virtutibus dignissimo literas de- 
nique abs te humanissimas per eundem ac- 
cepi. Atque ego quidem cum nee Germa- 
norum ingenia, ne Cimbrorum quidem, aut 
Suecorum aspernari soleo, turn certe tuum, 
qui et Athenis Atticis natus, et, literarum 
studiis apud Italos fceliciter peractis, magno 
rerum usu honores amplissimos es cowse- 
cutus, judicium de me non possum quin plu- 
rimi faciam. Cum enim Alexander ille mag- 
nus in terris ultimis bellum gerens, tantos se 
militioe labores pertulisse testatus sit, rr t gwaf 
Adyvotiuv lvSo%Us eW«; quidni ego mihi gra- 
tuler, meque ornari quam maxime putem, 
ejus viri laudibus, in quo jam uno priscorum 
Atheniensium artes atque virtutes illae <ele- 
bratissimae renasci tarn longo intervallo et 
reflorescere videntur. Qua ex urbe cum tot 
viri disertissimi prodierint, eorum potissi- 
mum scriptis ab adolescentia pervolvendis 
didicisse me libens fateor quicquid ego in 
literis profeci. Quod si mihi tanta vis di- 
cendi accepta ab illis et quasi transfusa in- 



LITE OF MILTON. 377 

esset, ut exercitus nostros et classes ad libe- 
ranclam ab Ottomannico tyranno Greciam, 
eloquentiae patriam, excitare possem, ad quod 
facinus egregium nostras opes penfe implo- 
rare videris, facerem profecto id quo nihil 
mihi antiquius aut in votis prius esset. Quid 
enim vel fortissimi olim viri, eloquentissimi 
gloriosius aut se dignius esse duxerunt, quam 
vel suadendo vel forliter faciendo ItevSspvg xoci 
uvTov'ofjLvg Kor/urbxi r*V 'v^xx^vag: Vermin .et aliud 
quiddam praeterea tentandum est, mea qui- 
dem sententia longe maximum, ut quis anti- 
quam in animis Graecorum virtutem, indus- 
triam,.iaborum tolerantiam, antiqua ilia stu- 
dia dicendo suscitare atque accendere possit. 
Hoc si quis effecerit, quod a nemine potins 
quam abs te, pro tua ilia insigni erga pa- 
triam pietate, cum summa prudentia reique 
militaris peritia, summo denique recupe- 
randae libertatis pristinae studio conjuncta, 
expectare debemus; neque ipsos sibi Graecos 
neque ullam gentem Graecis defuturam esse 
confido. Vale. 

Londinij June 1652. 



378 LIFE OF MILTON. 



Leonardo Philarce Atheniensi. 

Cum sim a pueritia totius Graeci nominis, 
tuarumque in primis Athenarum cultor, si 
quis alius, turn una hoc semper mihi per- 
suasissimum habebam, fore ut ilia urbs prae- 
claram aliquando redditura vicem esset be- 
nevolentiae erga se meae. Neque defuit sane 
tuae patriae nobilissimae antiquus ille genius 
augurio meo; deditque te nobis et germa- 
num Atticum et nostri amantissimum : qui 
me, scriptis duntuxat notum, et locis ipse 
disjunctus, humanissime per literas compel- 
laveris, et Londinum postea inopinatus ad- 
veniens, visensque non videntem, etiam in 
ea calamitate, propter quam conspectior ne- 
mini despectior multis fortasse sim, eadem 
benevolentia, prosequaris. Cum itaque auc- 
tor mihi sis, ut vistis recuperandi spem om- 
nem ne abjiciam, habere te amicum ac ne- 
cessarium tuuni Parisiis Tevenotum medicum, 
in curandis praesertim oculis praestantissi- 
mum, quem sis de meis luminibus consul- 
turus, si modo acceperis a me unde is causas 
morbi et symptomata possit intelligere; fa- 
ciam equidem quod hortaris, ne oblatam 
undecunque divinitus fortassis opem repu- 
tliare videar. Decennium, opinor, plus mi- 



LIFE OF MILTON. 3?9 

nus est, ex quo debilitari atque hebescere 
visum sensi, eodemque tempore lienem visce- 
raque omnia gravari flatibusque vexari: et 
mane quidem, si quid pro more legere coe- 
pissem, oculi statim penitus dolere lectio- 
nemque refugere, post mediocrem deinde 
corporis exercitationem recreari; quam as- 
pexissem lucernam, iris quaedam visa est 
redimere: haud ita multo post sinistra in 
parte oculi sinistri (is enim oculus aliquot 
annis prius altera nubilavit) caligo oborta, 
quae ad latus illud sita erant, omnia eripiebat. 
Anteriora quoque, si dexterum forte oculum 
clausissem, minora visa sunt. Deficiente per 
hoc ferfe triennium sensim atque paulatim 
altero quoque lumine, aliquot ante mensibus 
quam visus omnis aboleretur, quae immotus 
ipse cernerem visa sunt omnia nunc dex- 
trorsum, nunc sinistrorsum natare ; frontem 
totam atque tempora inveterati quidem va- 
pores videntur insedisse ; qui somnolenta 
quadam gravitate oculos, a cibo pra&sertim 
usque ad vesperam, plerunque urgent atque 
deprimunt; ut mihi haud raro veniat in men- 
tern Salmydessii vatis Phinei in Argonaulicis, 






380 LIFE OF MILTON. 

Sed neque illucl omiserim, dum adhuc visus 
aliquantum supererat, ut primuni in lecto 
decubuissem meque in alterutrum latus re- 
clinassem,consuev r isse copiosum lumen clausis 
oculis emicare; deinde, imminuto indies visu, 
colores perinde obscuriores cum impetu et 
fragore quodam intimo exilire; nunc autem, 
quasi extincto lucido, merus nigror, aut cine- 
raceo distinclus et quasi intextus solet se 
affundere: caligo tamen, quae perpetuo ob- 
vcrsatur tarn noclu quam interdiu, albenti 
semper quam nigricanti propior videtur; et 
volvente se oculo aliquantillum lucis quasi 
per rimulam admittit. Ex quo tametsi me- 
dico tantundem quoque spei possit elucere, 
tamen ut in re plane insanabili ita me paro 
atque compono; illudque soepe cogito, cum 
destinati cuique dies tenebrarum, quod mo- 
net sapiens, mulli sint, meas adhuc tenebras, 
singulari Numinis benignitate, inter otium et 
studia, vocesque amicorum et salulationes, 
illis letlialibus multo esse mitiores. Quod 
si, ut scrip turn est, non solo pane vivet homo 
sed omni verbo prodeunte per os Dei, quid 
est, cur quis in hoc itidem non acquiescat, 
non solis se oculis, sed Dei ductu an provi- 
dentia satis oculatum esse. Sane dummodo 
ipse mihi prospicii, ipse mihi providet quod 
facit, meque per omnem vitam quasi manu 



LIFE OF MILTOX. 581 

ducit atque deducit, ne ego meos oculos, 
quandoquidem ipsi sic visum est, libens fe- 
riari jussero. Teque, mi Philara, quocunque 
res ceciderit, non minus forti et confirmato 
animo, quam si Lynceus essem, valeie jubeo. 

Westmonast. Septemb. 23,, 4654. 

To the most illustrious Leonard Philaras, Em- 
bassador from the Duke of Parma to the 
Court of France. 

" Your kind feelings toward me, most 
accomplished Philaras, as well as your flat- 
tering opinion of my " Defence of the Eng- 
lish People/' I first learned from your letter 
written partly upon that subject to Mr. 
Auger, a man eminent among us for his fide- 
lity in the discharge of various embassies: 
through his hands I subsequently received 
your compliments with 3 r our picture, and a 
panegyric most worthy of your virtues; and 
lastly a very polite letter. Accustomed as I 
am not to think slightly of German, or even 
of Danish and Swedish genius, it is impos- 
sible that I should not most highly value ap- 
probation from you, w T ho were born in at'ic 
Athens, and, after successfully completing 
your studies in Italy, have since by your ex- 
tensive exoerience attained the most distiu- 



382 LIFE OF MILTON. 

guished honours. For as Alexander the Great, 
when warring at the extremity of the world, 
affirmed that he encountered all his toils to 
win the esteem of the Athenians, why may not 
I felicitate myself and account it my greatest 
ornament to be commended by him, in whom 
alone the celebrated arts and virtues of old 
Athens, after their long extinction, seem 
again to live and to flourish — of Athens the 
mother of so many eloquent men, to the care- 
ful study of whose writings, from my early 
youth, I willingly acknowledge myself to be 
chiefly indebted for whatever proficiency I 
have made in letters. If, then, I had acquired 
from them, as it were by transfusion, such 
energies of speech as could rouse our fleets 
and armies to rescue Greece, the native soil 
of eloquence, from the Turkish yoke, a glo- 
rious achievement for which you seem al- 
most to implore my exertions, I would in- 
stantly accomplish it as the first and dearest 
object of my wishes. For what were the men of 
old, most illustrious for eloquence or for va- 
lour, deemed greater and more worthy of them- 
selves, than to restore by their power, either 
of persuasion or of action, freedom and inde- 
pendence to Greece? But another, and in my 
judgment the most important object remains 
to be attempted — namely, to rouse and re- 



LIFE OF MILTON. 385 

kindle with oratory in the minds of the 
Greeks their ancient courage, and industry, 
and patience of hardships, and other manly 
virtues. When this is effected, (and from 
whom, if not from you, in whom the patriot, 
the sage, the soldier, and the lover of liberty 
are all in their highest degree united, may 
we expect its accomplishment?) neither will 
any other nation, I trust, be wanting to the 
Greeks, nor the Greeks to themselves. Fare- 
well!'— 

London, June 1&32. 

To Leonard Philaras, of Athens. 

" Devoted from my earliest youth to 
every thing connected with Greece and with 
your own Athens, my Philaras! in particu- 
lar, I have always stedfastly believed that 
the time would come when that city would 
bestow upon me some signal proof of her 
gratitude in return. By giving to me in 
you a genuine son of Attica and an affec- 
tionate friend, the ancient genius of your 
illustrious land has fulfilled mv most san- 
guine expectations. Known to 3^011 only by 
my writings, and widely separated in our 
abodes, I was first honoured with your kind 
correspondence; and when afterwards an 



384 LIFE OF MILTON. 

unexpected occasion brought you to Lon- 
don, with the same kindness you came to see 
me, who could see nobody; one labouring 
under an affliction which can entitle him to 
little observation and may, perhaps, expose 
him to much disregard. As however you 
entreat me not to abandon all hope of reco- 
vering my sight, and state that you have a 
medical friend at Paris, (M. Thevenot) par- 
ticularly eminent as an oculist, whom you 
could consult upon the subject if I would 
transmit to you the causes and the symp- 
toms of my disease; that I may not seem to 
neglect any means, perhaps of divine sug- 
gestion, for my relief, I will hasten to comply 
with your request. 

It is now about ten years, I think, since 
I first perceived my sight beginning to grow 
weak and dim, and, at the same time, my 
spleen and other viscera heavy and flatulent. 
When I sate down to read as usual in the 
morning, my eyes gave me considerable pain, 
and refused their office till fortified by mode- 
rate exercise of body. If I looked at a candle 
it appeared surrounded with an iris. In a 
little time, a darkness, covering the left side 
of the left eye, which was partially clouded 
some years before the other, intercepted the 
view of all things in that direction. Objects 



LIFE OF MILTON. 385 

stlso in front seemed to dwindle in size when- 
ever I closed my right eye. This eye too for 
three years gradually failing, a few months 
previous to my total blindness, while I was 
perfectly stationary, every thing seemed to 
swim backward and forward : and now thick 
vapours appear to settle on my forehead and 
temples, which weigh down my lids with an 
oppressive sense of drowsiness, especially in 
the interval between dinner and the evening; 
so as frequently to remind me of Phineus the 
Salmydessian, in the Argonautics. 

In darkness swam his brain, and, where he stood, 
The stedfast earth seem'd rolling as a flood. 
Nerveless his tongue* and, every power oppress'^ 
He sank, and languish'd into torpid rest. 

I ought not to omit mentioning that, before 
I wholly lost my sight, as soon as I lay down 
in bed and turned upon either side, brilliant 
flashes of light used to issue from my closed 
eyes; and afterwards, upon the gradual failure 
of my powers of vision, colours, proportion- 
ably dim and faint, seemed to rush out with 
a degree af vehemence and a kind of inward 
noise. These have now faded into uniform 
blackness such as ensues on the extinction of 
a candle; or blackness varied only and in- 
termingled with a clunnish grey. The con- 
stant darkness however in which I live day 

2 c 



586 ilFE OF MILTOtf. 

and night, inclines more to a whitish than a 
blackish tinge; and the eye in turning itself 
round admits, as through a narrow chink, a 
very small portion of light* But this, though 
it may perhaps offer a similar glimpse of 
hope to the physician, does not prevent me 
from making up my mind to my case, as one 
evidently beyond the reach of cure: and I 
often reflect that, as many days of darkness, 
according to the wise u man, are allotted to 
us all, mine, which, by the singular favour of 
the Deity, are divided between leisure and 
study and are recreated by the conversation 
and intercourse of my friends, are far more 
agreeable than those deadly shades of which 
Solomon is speaking. But, if, as it is written, 
44 Man shall not live by bread alone, but by 
every word that proceedeth out of the mouth 
of God/' x why should not each of us likewise 
acquiesce in the reflexion, that he derives the 
benefits of sight not from his eyes alone, but 
from the guidance and providence of the 
same supreme being? Whilst He looks out, 
and provides for me as he does, and leads 
me about as it were with his hand through 
the paths of life, I willingly surrender my own 
faculty of vision in conformity to his good 
pleasure: and, with a heart as strong and as 

« Eccles. xi. 8. x Matt. iv. 4. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 387 

stedfast, as if I were a Lynceus 3 I bid you, 
my Philaras, farewel ! 

Westminster, Sept. 28, 1654. 

Amidst the thunder of applause, with ivhich 
the " Defence of the People of England" 
was gratulated, it cannot be supposed that 
Milton's immediate employers, the Council 
of State, would suffer their approbation to 
be silent. The donation however of a thou- 
sand pounds, with which they are said by 
Toland to have testified their sense of the 
service, is exposed to some doubt by the 
following passage in the author's " Second 
Defence/' " Tuque scito illas" " opimitates" 
atque " opes," quas mihi exprobras, non at- 
tigisse, 7ieqne eo nomine, quo maxime accasas, 
obolo factum ditiorem." 7 " Be assured that I 
have not attained to that affluence of good 
things, and to that wealth with which you 
upbraid me; and that, on that particular ac- 
count, which forms the principal subject of 
your accusation, I have not been made one 
penny the richer" But the munificence of 
the Council might have been posterior to the 
date of this writing; or the testimony of the 
passage may be regarded as not sufficiently 
explicit to be admitted against the positive 
y P. W. v. 221 . 



388 LIFE OF MILTOtf. 

assertion of Toland, coinciding with the gene- 
ral character of the republican government. 

But Milton experienced a reward of 
much higher value in his estimation than 
any pecuniary remuneration. While his op- 
ponent's production lingered on the vender's 
shelves or crept languidly through a very 
confined circulation, his own passed rapidly 
through a variety of impressions, 2 and occu- 
pied a large space in the public mind. It 
made its author, says Baylc, the subject of 
conversation over the world ; and the distinc- 
tion, with which it was branded at Paris and 
Toulouse, in which cities it was burnt by the 
common hangman, contributed to increase 
rather than to lessen the extent of its fame. 

Proportioned to the triumph of Milton 
were the humiliation and chagrin of his 

z In a letter from Leyden, dated on the 8th of May 1651, tp 
his friend J. Vossius, then at Stockholm, N. Heinsius says that 
of Milton's work five editions had been already published — that 
it had been translated into Dutch, and was then translating, as he 
heard, into French. Virulentum Miltoni librum jamdudum ad 
vos perlatum confido. Ejus editiones quinque jam hie vidimus : 
Belgicam etiam versionem, Gallicam nunc adornari ferunt. Burm. 
Syll. iii. (500. The Defensio Regia, it is true, was not without its 
readers; and, favoured by a numerous and strong party, it passed 
more than once and in more than one form through the press: 
but, with reference to the sale and the circulation of the *' De- 
fence of the People of England," those of the " Royal Defence'' 
were certainly very languid and confined. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 38$ 

adversary. Elated and inflamed by habi- 
tual superiority, his arrogant and assuming 
spirit was ill formed to acquiesce in defeat; 
and in defeat by a man with whose name, 
till the moment of the encounter, he was 
probably unacquainted. The result indeed 
of this unfortunate contest was peculiarly af- 
flicting to the feelings, and unpropitious to 
the interests of Salmasius. a The numerous 
enemies, whom his want of moderation had 
excited, now exulted on his fall: his work 
was suppressed in Holland by an order of 
the States General, and Christina, the capri- 
cious sovereign of Sweden, who had previ- 
ously entertained him with the most honour- 
able distinction and in whose court he was 
residing when Milton's reply reached Stock- 
holm, now averted her countenance and 
treated him with studied neglect* She had 
almost compelled his visit by the impor- 
tunity of her invitations; and her attentions 
to him had been of so marked and peculiar 

a May it be noticed as remarkable that in his (C Eloge fune- 
bre," which I have already mentioned, (p. 350 in the note,) 
the Dutch professor, Vorstius, studiously avoids every allusion to 
this memorable controversy? By no process of art or strain of in- 
genuity could it be forced to yield any materials adapted to his 
friendly purposes. To convert the basest mineral into gold 
would be as easy an exploit as to form the dirty substance of the 
tc Defensio Regia,." and the posthumous ee Responsio" into 
wreath of glory for the brow of their author. 



390 LIFE OP MILTON. 

a nature as to awaken, according to com- 
mon report, the jealousies of Madame de 
Saumaise. b On the discovery however of 
his inferiority as a writer to his English an- 
tagonist, the Queen is stated, in some of the 
newspapers of that day, to have " cashiered 
him her favour as a pernicious parasite and 
a promoter of tyranny." ° She certainly mor- 
tified him by her liberal praises of Milton's 
composition, and discovered in her manner 
a degree of coldness of which he was acutely 
sensible. It has been asserted that the va- 
rious afflictions of his pride on this occasion 
proved eventually fatal to his life; and it 
cannot surely be regarded as improbable that 
the pains arising from such a cause should, 
in their intensity, be injurious to health and 
accelerate the crisis of dissolution. Let this, 
however, be decided according to the reader's 
fancy: — Salmasius retired from the court of 



h When he was indisposed, or confined to his room by the 
cold of the climate, the Queen would visit him in his chamber, 
and, locking the door, would light his fire, make his breakfast, 
and stay with him for some hours. This was the report of the 
day, and if it be true, we cannot reasonably be surprised at his 
wife's jealousy. * 

c The expressions, which I have copied, are from Nedham's 
" Mercurius Politicus." But Nedham was a great crony, as 
Wood tells us, of Milton's, and might therefore be suspected 
of exaggerating the fact in question. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 391 

Stockholm in September 1651, and died ? at 
Spa in Germany, in the following September, 
when he had just completed a most virulent 
reply to sting if he could not mortally wound 
his successful adversary. But this last product 
of the mind of the great Salmasius, which was 
published with happy malignity in the year of 
the Restoration, and dedicated by his son to 
Charles II, was of a character to hurt only the 
memory of its author. On the devoted head 
of Milton, it accumulated every crime which 
can debase our poor nature, and every oppro* 
brious epithet which from the most copious 
vocabulary the most curious and zealous ran^ 

d Of the gout, to which he had been subject, as his bio- 
grapher Clement assures us : but few complaints are more ex- 
asperated by the disorders of the mind than the gout. 

The violent agitation of his spirits, in consequence of the 
power of Milton's reply to him, is attested by all the contem- 
porary scholars who had access to him at the time; and the con- 
flict of so much strong and bad passion was more than sufficient 
to overthrow a frame, not naturally vigorous and then enfeebled by 
disease. An idle story, of his ghost's appearing to terrify his 
widow, was in popular circulation. N. Heinsins alludes to it 
very jocularly, in a letter to his friend, Gronovius. De spectro 
res faceta est. Conjux vivum exagitarat, nunc ille conjugem 
mortuus. [Burm. Syll. iii. 329.] 

It is certain that at the crisis of this controversy the mind of 
Salmasius was so strongly affected as to induce the paroxysm of a 
fever. The fact is ascertained in another letter from N. Heinsius to 
Gronovius. Interim ne nihil agat, (speaking of Salmasius, Hein- 
sius says,) ex febricula decumbit, quam illi studium illud ardens 
conciliasse visum, sic ultimi ferebant nuncii The latter is dateci 
on the 4th of June, 165 1 . [Ibid. 270.] 



39^ LIFE OF MILTON. 

cour could extort. As I am not possessed of 
this paltry work,* to which the passions of an 
eminent man could induce him to conde- 
scend, I am compelled to rest my report of 
it on the testimony of Vossius who saw it in 
manuscript, of Bayle, and of Dr. Birch. 
From the last of these writers, I shall insert 
a further account of it in a note. 6 

e His reply to Miltorfdid not appear till the year of the Res- 
toration,, when it was printed at London in 24to, under the fbr- 
lowing title; " Claudii Salmasii ad Joannem Miltonum Respon- 
sio, Opus posthunum," with a dedication to Charles II, by Sal- 
masius's son Claudius, dated at Dijon, Sept. 1, lfjfjO. This Book 
is written with unexampled virulence. He treats Milton as an 
ordinary schoolmaster; " Qui Ludimagister in schola trivial! 
Londinensi fuit;" and charges him with having divorced his wife 
after a year's marriage, for reasons best known to himself, and de- 
fending the lawfulness of divorce for any causes whatsoever. He 
stiles him ee impura bellua, quae nihil hominis sibi refiqui fecit 
praster lippientes oculos y and charges him with some false quan- 
tities in his Latin juvenile poems j and throughout the whole book 
gives him the titles of Bellua, fanaticus latro, Homuriculus, Lip- 
pulus, Ceeculus, Homo perditissimus, Nebulo impurus, scelestus 
audax & nefarius Alastor, infandus Impostor, &:c. and declares, 
that he would have him tortured with burning pitch or scalding 
oil till he expired : " Pro caeteris autem tuis factis dictisque dig- 
num dicam videri, qui pice ardenti, vel oleo fervente perfundarfs, 
usque dum animam effles nocentem et carnifici jam pridem debi~ 
tam." [Account of Life and Writings of Milton, p. xxxvi.] 

The virulence of this work is frequently made the subject of 
allusion by the learned correspondents of that age. Speaking of 
this Responsio by Salmasius, Heinsius says in a letter to his friend 
Gronovius — Salmasius Miltonum suum defricare pergitj in edendo 
horrilili isto scripto graviter desudant operae typographical ia 
Suecia\ 



LIFE OF MILTON. 3Q3 

The publication of this reply to Milton, 
which was delayed, as we have noticed, for 
some years, was preceded by that of two others, 
produced with different degrees of power, 
but equally envenomed and aimed equally 
at the heart. The earliest of these anony- 
mous replies, which was erroneously imputed 
by Milton to bishop Bramhall, appeared in 
1651 with the strange title of " Apologia pro 
Rege et Populo Anglicano contra Johannis 
Polypragmatici (alias Miltoni Angli) Defen- 
sionem destructivam, &c. — and the second, 
written by Peter du Moulin, (the son of an 
obscure French satirist of Sedan, but who 
subsequently obtained by his party merits a 
prebendal stall in Canterbury,) was published 
at the Hague in 1652, and called, " Regii 
sanguinis clamor ad coelum adversus parri- 
cidas Anglicanos," or " The Cry of Royal 
Blood to Heaven against the English Parri- 
cides." To the former of these works, which 
was altogether a contemptible production, 
and which came from the pen of John Row- 

And a little after he adds;— • 

Miror intemperiem profecto hominis furiosi et quietis impa- 
tientem animum. Tot prsestantium animarum ultrices scilicet 
ilium 

Exagitant Furise et Furiarum maxima conjux. 

Bnrm. Syll. iii. 2/4. 
Thia letter bears date July 50tb 1651, 



394 LIFE OP MILTON. 

land/ an English ecclesiastic of whom we 

f We have this information from himself in a subsequent pro- 
ductionj which was published in 1653, and dedicated to the Em- 
peror Ferdinand III. The title of the work is (e Polemica, sive 
supplementum ad Apologiam Anonymam pro Rege & Populo An- 
glicano, adversus Jo. Miltoni Defensionem populi Anglican*, per 
Jo. Rowlandum. Pastorem Anglicum." 

In this work, Mr. Rowland refers in several places to his pre- 
ceding publication against Milton; and seems pleased with the 
circumstance of his being mistaken for the courtly bishop of 
Derry. 

P. 22. " Haec in Apologia med obscure tacta sunt." 

P. 41, 42. " Ego interea, post ante dictos pugiles, Salmasium 
et Miltonum, unus e turba sine nomine, veritatis solius patrocinio 
nixus, pacis semper cupidus, indignatione potius quam animo 
scribendi, me ad aliquid scribendum applicavi. 

Semper ego auditor tantum, nunquamne reponam 
Vexatus toties ? 



— — Ut verb Regem et Populum, quos Salmasius 

£ua defensione regia, Miltonus sua defensione populi, diviserant, 
conciliarem; nee enim Rex sine Populo nee Populus sine Rege 
tarn felixesse poterit, utrumque conj ungendo, (testis non arbiter,) 
quantam, quantam mea tenuitas pateretur, pro Rege et Populo 
Anglicano Apologiam edidi" 

P. 48. ft Cui, M (speaking of his antagonist Philips,) ct ratio 
non est quod ipse succenserem, qui errando circa authorem Apo- 
logia?, me dignitate Episcopali honoravit; et Episcopum Dirr- 
haeum, aulicorum sacerdotum primipilum, omni vitiorum labe 
maculavit." 

P. 49. Non sum enim Johannes Bramalius, Episcopus Dirr- 
hseus aulicus, sed Johannes Rowlandus, Anglicus — Pastor Ecclesise 
particularis." 

What is meant by the expression, <{ Ecclesiae particularis," I 
am at a loss to discover: but I am frequently puzzled by Mr. 
Rowland; the barbarisms and solecisms of whose page forbade me 



LIFE OF MILTON. 3.95 

know nothing but by his own report," an an- 
swer was written by John Philips, Milton's 
youngest nephew, who had not then attained 
his twentieth year: against the latter Milton 
drew his own formidable pen; and we shall 
soon have occasion to speak of the brilliant 
result. 

Before we finally dismiss from our no- 
tice the " Defence of the People of Eng- 
land/' it may be proper to mention that 
the curiosity respecting its author, which 
it generally excited, gave rise to a corre- 
spondence, among the leading scholars of that 
age, which supplies us with some valuable 

to ascribe it, before I was acquainted with its author, to a man of 
such respectable learning and talents as Bramhall. 

Though I wrote this note with Rowland's " Polemica," in my 
hand, and drew my information respecting him from a source of 
my own, it would be uncandid in me not to acknowledge that 
Mr. Todd has preceded me on the ground, and, that his correction 
of my former ignorance, on the subject immediately before us, is 
at this moment under my eye. To Rowland's assertion of the 
ee Apologia, &c." as the issue of his own brain, Mr. Todd has 
been enabled to add an express disavowal of this work, with an 
assignment of it to its proper author, by the prelate to whom it 
had been so injuriously attributed. In a letter to his son, from 
Antwerp in May 1654, which has lately been discovered among 
the bishop's papers, Bramhall says," That silly book, which he, 
(Milton,) imputes to me, was written by one John Rowland, who 
since hath replied upon him. I never read a word either of the 
first book or of the reply in my life." [Todd's Life of Milton, 
2d ed. p. 82, 63.] 



3Q6 LIFE OF MILTON. 

and interesting information. 5 Isaac Vossius, 
who after the Restoration was made one of 
the Canons of Windsor, being at the court 
of Stockholm when the " Defence" was pub- 
lished, relates the warm approbation which 
Christina expressed of Milton's work, and 
unites his own applauses with those of the 
Queen. h Francis Junius, the writer of " De 



s In a letter from Stockholm dated on the 12th of April l65J, 
Isaac Vossius writes to N. Heinsius — Liber Miltoni heri hue est 
allatus. Exemplar meum petiit a me Regina. Ipse non nisi 
cursim dum perlustravi. Nihil tale ab Anglo expectaram: et 
certe, nisi me animus fallit, placuit quoque, uno tantum excepto, 
incomparabili nostrse Dominae, Dicit tamen Salmasius 3e perdi- 
turum auctorem cum toto Parlamento. [Burm. Syll. iii. SQS.] 
In a letter written a few days afterwards to the same correspon- 
dent, Vossius says, Miltoni apologiam pro Parlamento suo priori 
accepimus hebdomade. Legit istud scriptum incomparabilis nostra 
Domina, et, nisi fallor, valde ei placuit. Certe et ingenium istius 
viri et scribendi genus multis prsesentibus collaudavit. [lb. 5p6.] 

h De Miltono (says Isaac Vossius in a letter to N. Heinsius, 
dated on the 8th of June 1651) jam certior factus sum ab avun- 
culo meo Junio, qui cum eo familiaritatem coiit. Is mihi signi- 
(ficavit eum Parlamento esse a Secretis in negotiis extemis, esse, 
multarum linguarum peritum, non quidem nobili, sed tamen 
generosa, ut ipsi loquuntur, ortum stirpe, discipulum Patricii 
Junii, comem, affabilem, multisque aliis praeditum virtutibus. 
Burm. Syll. iii. 618.] In the library of Trin. Coll. Dublin, [as 
I am informed by the kindness of Mr. J. Cooper Walker,] is pre- 
served a volume of Milton's prose-tracts, which had been pre- 
sented with an inscription by the Author to this Junius j who was* 
not less celebrated for his Anglo-Saxon than for his classical erudi- 
tion. Junius in his report to his nephew, mistakes the Christian 
namcof Milton's tutor, and substitutes Patrick for Thomas, VOe 



LIFE OF MILTON. 397 

Picture Veterum," a learned treatise on the 
painting of the Ancients, and who was inti- 
mate with our author, speaks in the most fa- 
vourable terms of the extent of his literary 
acquisitions, of his unblemished morals, of 
his mild and pleasing manners. * Nicholas 
Heinsius, who then resided at Venice, bears 
testimony, from information collected on the 
spot, to the purity (the Italians called it au- 
sterity) of Milton's conduct during his visit 
to Italy, and rescues him in this instance 
from the slanders of Salmasius. N. Hein- 
sius k also professes his admiration of the 
*' Defence of the People of England/' but 

J In a letter to Isaac Vossius dated from Venice on the 1 8th 
of Feb. 1653., N. Heinsius, after treating the abominable calum- 
nies of Salmasius respecting Milton with contempt, proceeds to 
say— Imo invisus est Italis Anglus iste (Miltonus) inter quos 
multo vixit tempore., ob mores nimis severosj cum et de religione 
libenter disputaret, &c. — A little before, the letter-writer had 
spoken of Milton's Latin poetry.: Poemata ejus mihi ostendit 
Holstenius. Nihil ilia ad elegantiam apologiae. In prosodiam 
peccavit frequenter. Magnus igitur Salmasianas crisi campus hie 
apertus: sed qua fronte alienos iste versus notabit cuj us Musis 
nihil est cacatius ? [lb. iii. 669.] 

k In a letter to J. F. Gronovius dated from Amsterdam, on the 
1st of June 1651, N. Heinsius says " Misit (Salmasius) duas in 
hanc urbem nuper epistolas, rabiei Sycophanticae non inanes, 
quibus omne se virus in me conversurum minatur quod Miltoni 
scriptum probari a me intelligat. Ego vero et dixi et dicam porro 
malam a Miltono causam tarn bene actam quam Regis infelicis- 
simi causam pessime egit Scrilonius, Burm. Syll. iii. 2/0, 



39$ LIFE OF MILTON. 

speaks with disrespect of the writer's Latin 
poetry, as greatly inferior in merit to his prose 
composition, and as censurable for its fre- 
quent offences against quantity. On the sub- 
ject of this charge we have already had oc- 
casion to remark; and it may now be neces- 
sary only to observe that, if we except the 
scazons addressed to Salsilli and the ode to 
Rouse, in both of which pieces the poet may 
be regarded as guilty rather of new and un- 
warrantable fabrics of verse than of violations 
of quantity, the accusation, though not ground- 
less, seems to overpass the occasion and to be 
too strong for the actual delinquency. 

As the " Iconoclastes" and the " Defence 
of the People of England" were composed 
between the closes of the years 1649 and 
1651 they were of course completed before 
the author's removal to Petty-France, which 
did not take place till the beginning of 1652. 
On the second of May, in this year, his fa- 
mily was increased by the birth of his fourth 
child, Deborah; and the mother dying in 
childbed, he was left, with three orphan 
daughters, in domestic solitude, and in a 
state rapidly advancing if it had not already 
reached to total blindness. The prediction of 
his physicians was now to experience its fatal 
accomplishment. His sight, naturally weak 



LIFE OF MILTON*. 399 

and impaired by incessant study from the 
earliest periods of his life, had for several 
years been sensibly declining, and, when he 
engaged in his last great work, had disco- 
vered, as we have remarked, symptoms of 
approaching extinction. In the course of 
that honourable labour he entirely lost the 
vision of one eye; and that of the other 
closing soon afterward, he was resigned to 
entire darkness, and " for the book of know* 
ledge fair" was 

" Presented with an universal blank 
Of Nature's works." 

Of this completion of his misfortune the 
date is by no means accurately settled. All 
his biographers, with the exception of Mr. 
Todd, place the melancholy consummation in 
1654; but it unquestionably happened in some 
antecedent period. In his letter to Philaras, 
written in the autumn of 1654, Milton speaks 
of his loss of sioht as of no very recent mis- 
fortune; and we know that when he was vi- 
sited by his Athenian friend, at a time not 
greatly posterior to the publication of the 
" Defence," he was then totally blind. Mr. 
Todd has noticed in Thurloe's State Papers a 
letter from the Hague, dated June the 20th, 
1653, in which Milton is mentioned as blind : 



400 LIFE OF MILTON. 

and it must not be forgotten that the writer 
of the " Regii sanguinis Clamor/' published 
in 1652, upbraids him with his blindness as 
an infliction of the Divine wrath, and selects 
for the motto of his work Virgil's description 
of the eyeless Cyclops — 

Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum. 
A monster horrid, hideous, huge, and blind. 

We must conclude therefore, that his total 
loss of sight soon followed the publication of 
his answer to Salmasius, and happened early 
in 1652. 

The fortitude, with which he supported 
himself under this afflicting privation, is ad- 
mirably discovered in that sonnet to his friend 
Cyriac Skinner, of which I have already spoken 
with praise and which I shall now transcribe. 
1 could never read it without paying to its au- 
thor the profound homage of my respect. 

TO CYRIAC SKINNER. 

Cyriac, this three years day, these eyes, though clear 

To outward view of blemish or of spot, 

Bereft of light, their 'seeing have forgot; 
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear 
Of sun, or moon, or star throughout the year, 



1 Vous avez en Angleterre un aveugle, nomme Milton, qui a 
le renom d'avoir bien escrit— v. i. p. 26 J . 



LIFE OF MILTON. 401 

Or man or woman : — yet I argue not 

Against Heavens hand or will, nor bate a jot 
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer 
Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask? 

The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied 
In liberty's defence, my noble task, 

Of which all Europe rings from side to side: 
This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask, 

Content, though blind, had I no better guide. 



He was forewarned, as we have observed, 
of the contingent calamity, and, in the alter- 
native of evils, he preferred the loss of sight 
to the dereliction of duty. The magnani- 
mity of Achilles, to which he alludes in the 
following interesting passage in his " Second 
Defence/' can scarcely be considered as su- 
perior to his own. 

" Aded ut cum datum mihi public^ esset 
illud in Defensionem Regiam negotium, eo- 
demque tempore et adversa simul valetudine, 
et oculo jam pene altero amisso, conflictarer, 
prsedicerentque diserte medici, si hunc la- 
borem suscepissem, fore ut utrumque brevi 
amitterem, nihil ista prsemonitione deter- 
ritus, non medici, ne iEsculapii quidem Epi- 
daurii ex adyto vocem, sed divinioris cujus- 
dam intus monitoris viderer mihi audire; 
duasque sortes, fatali quodam natu, jam 
mihi propositus, hinc csecitatem inde offi- 
cium; aut oculorum jacturam necessario fa- 

2 D 



402 LIFE OF MILTON. 

ciendam, aut summum officium deserendum: 
occurrebantque animo bina ilia fata, quae 
retulisse Delphis consulentem de se malrem 
narrat Thetidis filius. 

AiXfia.$/oL$ XTjpa; (pspepev bcwdrtm tikta-oa- 
El \t,lv ti. ccv'Si plvwv Tguutvv zuoKiv dfj,<pi[j,ec% i uj[Aa.i, 
''X2Aero [aiv pen voo-ros, drug xX'zog d'pdflov z'crrou. 
El Sa ksv o^xcc^ "iK(v[j,cti fiXrp is wargiSa. yccic/.v, 
"ClXito poi x\io$ itrdxiv, art) tygov SI pai olWjv 
"JLtforelffA . 

Unde sic mecura reputabam, multos gra- 
viore malo minus bonum, morte gloriam, re- 
demisse; mihi contra majus bonum minore 
cum malo proponi: ut possem cum caecitate 
sol& vel honestissimum officii munus implere; 
quod ut ipsa gloria per se est solidius, ita 
cuique optatius atque antiquius debet esse, 
Hac igitur lam brevi luminum usura, quanta 
maximd quivi cum utilitate publica, quoad 
liceret, fruendum esse statui. Videtis quid 
praetulerim, quid amiserim, qu4 inductus ra- 
tione: desinant ergo judiciorum Dei calum- 
niatores maledicere, deque me somnia sibi 
fingere: sic denique habento; me sortis meae 
neque. pigere neque pcsnitere; immotum at- 
que fixum in sententia perstare; Deum ira- 
turn neque sentire, neque habere, immd 
maximis in rebus clementiam ejus et benig- 



LIFE OF MILTON. 403 

nitatem erga me paternam experiri atque 
agnoscere. m 

" So that when the task of replying to the 
" Defence of the King" was publicly com- 
mitted to me, at a time when I had to con- 
tend with ill-health, and when one of my 
eyes being nearly lost my physicians clearly 
predicted that, if I undertook the laborious 
work, I should soon be deprived of both, un- 
deterred by the warning, I seemed to hear a 
voice not of a physician or issuing from the 
shrine of Epidaurian iEsculapius, but of 
some internal and more divine monitor; and 
conceiving that by some fatal decree the 
alternative of two lots was proposed to me, 
that I must either lose my sight or must de- 
sert a high duty, the two destinies occurred 
to me, which the son of Thetis reports to 
have been submitted to him by his mother 
from the oracle of Delphi. 

<( For, as the goddess spake who gave me birth, 
Two fates attend me whilst I live on earth. 
If fix'd, I combat Ijv the Trojan wall, 
Deathless my fame, but certain is my fall : 
If I return, — beneath my native sky 
My days shall flourish long— my glory die." 



m P.W. ■ v. 216. 



404 LIFE OF MILTON, 

Reflecting therefore with myself that many 
had purchased less good with greater evil, 
and had even paid life as the price of glory; 
while to me the greater good was offered at 
the expence of the less evil, as merely by in- 
curring blindness I might satisfy the most 
honourable demand of duty; which, intrin- 
sically of more worth even than glory itself, 
ought to be the first and dearest object of 
every man's regard; I determined to dedi- 
cate the short enjoyment of my eyesight, 
with as much effect as I could, to the public 
advantage. You see then what I have pre- 
ferred, what I have lost, what motives in- 
fluenced my conduct. Let my slanderers 
therefore desist from their calumnies, nor 
make me the subject of their visionary and 
dreaming fancies: let them know that I am 
far from regretting my lot, or from repent- 
ing of my choice : let them be assured that 
my mind and my opinions are immoveably 
the same; — that I am neither conscious of 
the anger of God, nor believe that I am ex- 
posed to it; but, on the contrary, that I have 
experienced in the most momentous events 
of my life, and am still sensible of his mercy 
and paternal kindness." 

Equally unascertained with that of his 
blindness is the precise date of his second 



LIFE OF MILTON. 405 

marriage; which took place, as we are in- 
formed, about two years after his entire loss 
of sight. The lady, whom he chose on this 
occasion, was Catherine the daughter of a 
captain Woodcock of Hackney. She seems 
to have been the object of her husband's 
fondest affection; and, dying, like her pre- 
decessor, in childbed, within a year after her 
marriage, she was lamented by him in a 
pleasing and pathetic sonnet. The daughter, 
whom she bore to him, soon followed her to 
the tomb. As I shall insert the sonnet, which 
will be felt by every sensitive bosom, it may 
not be irrelevant to remark that the thought 
in its concluding line, which on a cursory 
view may be branded as a conceit, is strictly 
correct and just. In his dreams a blind man 
may expatiate in the full blaze of the sun, n 
and the morning, in which he awakes, un- 
questionably restores him to his darkness. 
The fault is in the expression alone. 

" I waked — she fled: and I replunged in night," 

would perhaps be sufficiently unexcep- 
tionable. 

n So Lucretius, lib. iv. 458. 

— ■>*— — — — et noctis caligine caeca 
Cerncre censemus solem, lumenque diurnum. 



406 



LIFE OF MILTON. 



ON HIS DECEASED WIFE. 



Methought I saw my late espoused saint, 

Brought to me, like Alcestis, from (he grave, 

Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave, 
Rescued from Death by force, though pale and faint : 
Mine, as whom, wash'd from spot of childbed taint, 

Purification in the old law did save, 

And such as yet once more I trust to have 
Full sight of her in heaven without restraint} 
Came, vested all in white, pure as her mind: 

Her face was veil'd, yet to my fancied sight 
Love, sweetness, goodness in her person shined 

So clear, as in no face with more delight. 
But O ! as to embrace me she inclined, 

I waked}— she fled, and day brought back my night. 

During this period of his domestic history, 
the powers of Milton were vigorously and ef- 
ficaciously employed in the hostilities of con- 
troversy. In 1652, the " Regii Sanguinis 
Clamor/' &c. a work replete with the most 
virulent abuse against the English, and with 
the most atrocious invectives and calumnies 
against Milton, was published, as we have 
before noticed, at the Hague. Fearful of 
avowing a production, which might expose 
him at that juncture to more than literary 
peril, Du Moulin, who afterwards professed 
himself to be the writer of this violent work, 
sent it in manuscript to Salmasius; and by 

° This fact is related by Du Moulin himself in the prefatory 
epistle, from which I have made an extract in one of the subse- 
quent pages. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 407 

him, for the purpose of publication, it was 
consigned to Alexander Moms, or More; 
whom this circumstance has lifted into unen- 
viable celebrity. 

Of Scotch parentage, but settled in France 
and at this time principal of the protestant 
college of Castres p in Languedoc, Morns pos- 
sessed talents and learning, and his renown 
as a preacher, resulting however less from his 
composition than from his manner and elo- 
cution, was not exceeded, if it were equalled 
by that of any of his competitors in the pul- 
pit. With his natural presumption and self- 
confidence increased by this evidence of his 
powers, and perhaps not aware of the full ex- 
tent of the danger which he was incurring, 
he did not for an instant decline the invi- 
dious office, assigned to him by Salmasius; 
but, withholding his own name on the occa- 
sion, and writing, under that of Adrian Ulac 
the printer, a dedication to the exiled king, 
he committed the offensive manuscript to 
the press. 

On this new provocation, the powers of 
Milton were again commanded into exertion 
by the government of his country; and in 

p Now in the Department of &* Tarn,, of which it is the 
chief town. 



408 LIFE OF MILTON. 

16*54 he produced the most interesting, if 
not the most striking of all his prose compo- 
sitions, " A second Defence of the People 
of England."* 

To repel that flood of slanders, with 
which his barbarian adversary had attempted 
to overwhelm him, it became necessary for 
the author to insist on many parts of his 
own history, and to disclose the springs 
within his bosom which had uniformly ac- 
tuated his conduct. In the execution of this 
delicate task, he speaks with so much of the 
unfaltering dignity of truth, and respecting 
facts so immediately under the correction 
of numbers who must have been acquainted 
with them, that it is impossible for us to re- 
fuse him our assent. This production has 
copiously supplied his biographers with ma- 
terials of peculiar value, as they cannot be 
obtained in any other place, and as their au- 
thenticity cannot be doubted. The defen- 
sive part therefore of this work constitutes 
at present its principal interest: but, at the 
time of its publication, its active hostility was 
the immediate and chief cause of its celebrity 

i The proper and full title of the work is " Johannis Mil- 
tonii Angli, pro Populo Anglicano Defensio secunda contra in- 
famem libellum Anonymum cui titulus," et Regii sanguinis 
clamor ad coelum adversus parricidas Anglicanos." London, 



LIFE Of MILTOK. 409 

and effect. The moral character of Morus was 
unhappily not proof against attack. With a 
quarrelsome and overbearing temper, he has 
been represented by some of his contempo- 
raries as the cause of war, like another He- 
len, wherever he came, or, like an Ishmael, 
with his hand lifted against every body while 
every body's hand was lifted against him; and 
his uncontrolled attachment to women was 
productive of adventures, not calculated to 
reflect honour upon a minister of the Gospel. 
Enabled to possess himself of the most 
correct information and with talents to im- 
prove it into the means of the most wound- 
ing offence, Milton pursues his adversary 
through the opprobrious privacies of his im- 
morality; and exacts a severe revenge for 
those savage insults/ in the guilt of which, as 

r We have already cited a passage from the Regii Sanguinii 
Clamor, in which Milton is charged with having been expelled 
from Cambridge,, and forced to fly, from punishment and disgrace, 
into Italy. [See note, p. 70.] To convey some idea to our 
readers of the spirit and style of those men to whom Milton in 
his replies has been accused of immoderate severity, and to show 
that Du Moulin did not unsuccessfully copy the great controver- 
sial model which he had studied in Salmasius, we will defile our 
page with another short extract from the virulent production now 
published by Morus. Unus inventus est, post eruditionem extra 
fines suos relegatam, qui Latine scribere auderet, magnus scilicet 
heros quem Salmasio opponerent, Johannes Miltonus. Quis et 
unde dubium : homone ? an vermis heri e sterquilinio editus r"-^- 



410 LIFE OF MILTON. 

their publisher and prefacer, Morus was 
beyond any question a party and accom- 
plice. Among other licentious amours of 
which Morus stood accused, his connexion 
w T ith a servant girl, whom he was said to 
have corrupted with a promise of marriage 
and afterward, in her pregnancy, to have 
deserted, had been made the subject of a 
legal prosecution by Madame de Saumaise, 
the girl's mistress, and had consequently be- 
come a topic of very general conversation. 
With reference to this piece of scandalous 
history, an unlucky epigram, commonly at- 

and a little after — " Miitonum arripuerunt, et illud ignobile latum 
in Salmasium jaculati sunt" — [Reg. San. Clam. p. 8] In this 
work Milton is styled <( Tartareus furcifer — teterrimus carnifex — 
tale horainis monstrum, &c. &c. Is it surprising that to an oppo- 
nent with such language the answer should not be mild? But Du 
Moulin's scurrility, gross as it is, is scarcely equal to his profane- 
ness. Not satisfied with making the sufferings of Charles and 
those of our blessed Lord precisely similar and parallel cases, he 
does not hesitate to affirm that the crime of the lews, when they 
crucified Jesus Christ, was incomparably less than that of the Eng- 
lish, when they brought their king to the scaffold ! ! ! " Prae isto,'« 
(says this Christian divine and dignitary of the English Church,) 
" nihil fuit Judaeorum scelus Christum cruci figentium, sive ho- 
minum mentem, sive sceleris effectus compares," &c. [p. 4.] and 
his reasoning on the subject is curious. The comparison be- 
tween the sufferings of the deposed monarch and those of " the 
Lord of Life," is to be found further in the volume, at p. 54, 55 
of the first edition: for a second edition of this execrable work 
was published in l65g, that it's author might not lose his reward 
at the glorious harvest of the Restoration. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 411 

tributed to Milton, had already appeared in 
Nedharn s " Mercurius Politicus;" and it was 
now again published in the work of which 
we are speaking. Depending altogether on a 
verbal conceit, its poignancy is not transfer- 
able to our language; and, as it is not re- 
markable for its delicacy, it may be left with- 
out regret under the veil of its original Latin. 

Galli ex concubitu gravidam te, Pontia, Mori 
Quis bene moratarn, morigeramque neget ? s 

On this point of attack Morus, in his reply, 
gave his antagonist an advantage by inad- 
vertently correcting the orthography of the 
girl's name, and affirming that it ought to be 
written Bontia and not Pontia. After all 
however, the fact seems to be disputable, at 
least in the atrocity which has been imputed 
to it : for the issue of Madame de Saumaise's 
prosecution was favourable to Morus; and 
the charge against him has been ascribed, by 
some of his contemporaries, rather to his neg- 
lect of the mistress than to his affection for 
the maid. c 

8 The English reader however may accept the following sub- 
stitute for the punning point of the original. 

Though Pontia's big, cease, dames, to call her whore ; 
You bear a spotless name,but she bears more. 

1 Madame de Saumaise's character was not of such immacu- 
late purity as to be exempt from suspicion and censure. In 



412 LITE OF MILTON. 

A threat having been suggested, in the 
" Regii sanguinis Clamor/ &c. of a second 
edition of Salmasius's work, or rather of the 
publication of a new production by that ce- 
lebrated scholar, Milton derides the menace 
with the contempt which might have been 
expected, " Tu igitur, ut pisciculus ille ante- 
ambulo, preecurris balaenarn Salmasium, im- 
pressiones in haec littora minitantem," &c. 
" You/' says he to Morus, " like some little 
pilot fish, precede the great whale Salmasius, 
and menace us with his incursions on our 
shore:" and then, pursuing the idea which 
had been thus accidentally presented to him, 
he ridicules the threatened publication in the 
following light sally: 

" Gaudete Scombri, et quicquid est piscium salo, 
Qui frigida hyeme incolitis algentes freta, 
Vestrum misertus ille Salmasius eques 
Bonus amicire nuditatem cogitat; 

Burman's Sylloge Epist. we find some curious anecdotes re- 
specting her, which were in circulation among her contempo- 
raries. She was accustomed to whip with her own hands, as 
N. Heinsius mentions, a boy of seventeen, who was one of her 
servants j and Morus's mistress, who is called an English or a 
Scotch girl, (Hebe Caledonia,) is said to have been her lady's assist- 
ant at the infliction of the punishment. Madame de Saumaise's 
violent prosecution of Morus seems to have been prompted by 
that resentment which results from disappointed love, and the 

" spretas injuria formse :" 
rather than by a calm regard to virtue and its interests. The 



LIFE OF MILTON. 413 

Chartaeque largus apparat papyrinoS 
Vobis cucullos, praeferentes Claudii 
Insignia nomenque et decus Salmasii, 
Gestetis ut per omne cetarium forum 
Equitis clientes, scriniis mungentium 
Cubito virorum, et capsulis gratissimos."— - 

" Ye herrings, and ye fish, who glide 
In winter through our northern tide, — 
Rejoice! Salmasius, noble knight! 
Pitying your cold and naked plight, 
Prepares his stores of paper goods, 
Kindly to make you coats and hoods, 
Stampt with his name his arms — his all: 
That you his clients, on each stall 
May shine above your brother fish, 
Array'd in sheets, the pride or wish 
Of fishmongers and dirty thieves, 
Who wipe their noses on their sleeves." 

P. W. v. 212. 

Scarcely had Morus taken the rash step 
of editing Du Moulin's abuse than, con- 
scious of the offence which he had given 
and hearing that Milton was preparing to 
resent it, he endeavoured by every means, 
which he could command, to avert or to 
lighten the vengeance which was trembling 
over his head. By some influence which he 

story of the whipping is too long, and, though shaded with the 
veil of a learned language, too indelicate for me to extract: but it 
may be found in Burman's Sylloge, torn. iii. 669, in a letter of 
N. Heinsius to Isaac Vossius ; from which we have already quoted 
the writer's defence of Milton's morality, and attack of his Latin 
poetry. 



414 LIFE OF MILTON. 

possessed, he prevailed on the Dutch em- 
bassador to mediate for the intervention of 
Cromwell's authority in his behalf; and, when 
this object could not be obtained, to try, with 
the power of the embassador's own request 
and with Morus's assurances of his not being 
the author of the injurious composition, to 
soften the resentment and to withdraw the 
pen from the hand of Milton. Nor were the 
attempts of Morus to suppress this dreaded 
publication confined to the period preceding 
its birth, or to the assistance which he sought 
from one of the diplomatic body. A letter 
to him from Bourdeaux," the French embas- 

* A curious letter (says Mr. Warton,) in Thurloe's State Pa- 
pers, (vol. ii. p. 529,) relating to this business, has been over- 
looked, from Bourdeaux, the French Ambassador in England, to 
Morus, Aug. 7, 1654. 

« Sir, 

At my arrival here, I found Milton's book so 
public, that I perceived it was impossible to suppress it. This 
man (Milton) hath been told that you were not the author of the 
book, which he refuted ; to which he answered, that he was at 
least assured that you had caused it to be imprinted : that you 
had writ the preface, and he believes some of the verses that are 
in it, and that, that is enough to justify him for setting upon 
you. He doth also add, he is very angry that he did not know 
several things, which he hath heard since, being far worse, as 
he says, than any he put forth in his book; but he doth reserve 
them for another, if so be you answer this. I am very sorry 
for this quarrel which will have a long sequence, as I perceive ; 
for after you have answered this, you may be sure he will reply 



LIFE OF MILTON. 415 

sador in London, preserved among Thurloe's 
State Papers and first cited by Mr. Warton, 
demonstrates the activity of his apprehensions 
and his efforts at this interesting crisis of his 
fame. But Milton was unmoved by any ap- 
plications, and, contenting himself with say- 
ing that nothing indecorous should escape 
from him in the controversy, published the 
work which is now before us; and it was soon 
in a circulation too vigorous to admit of its 
being suppressed. Its effects on the public 
opinion seem to have been great, and the de- 
licate character of Moms gave way before 
the weighty impression. He struggled how- 
ever to support himself by a reply,* contain- 
ing testimonies in favour of his moral charac- 
ter from some colleges and universities, and 
from the magistrates and synods of the towns 
in which he had resided. This defence drew 
another answer from Milton, in which he pro- 
duced additional authorities for his former 

with a more bloody one: for your adversary hath met with 
somebody here, who hath told him strange stones of you.'* 
(Milton's Juv. Poems by Warton, 2d ed, p. 486.) 

x Morus's answer was entitled, " Alexandri Mori Ecclesiasta* 
et sacrarum literarum Professoris, Fides Publica contra calum- 
nias J. M." — Milton called his reply to it, '* Authoris pro se 
Defensio contra Alexandrum Morum Ecclesiasten, Libelli fa- 
mosi cui titulus, fC Regii sanguinis clamor ad caelum adversus 
Panicidas Anglicanos," authorem recte dictum- 



416 LIFE OF MILTON. 

assertions against his adversary. To this work 
Moras was again tempted to publish a reply; 
a short refutation of which by Milton termi- 
nated the controversy. 

During the course of it, the alarm and, 
indeed the sufferings of Morus y had induced 

y The caution of u audi alteram partem" is never more ne- 
cessary to be observed than when we are reading, in the pages 
of an able writer, the character of his adversary. The moral* 
of Morus were certainly not unimpeachable ; but he passed 
through life with numerous friends among the religious, the 
learned, and the great. His preaching drew crowded audiences, 
and obtained him a numerous following. Though in more than 
one instance he was made the subject of a legal prosecution, 
the result was uniformly in his favour j and his life, which was 
never depressed by disgrace, was concluded by a religious and 
exemplary death. He might therefore have been a little irre- 
gular, and deviating, in consequence of human frailty, from the 
strict line of Christian morality: but we cannot conceive that 
his conduct was flagitious or stained with deep crimes. He 
died at the house of the duchess of Rohan in Paris, in 1670. 
By one of his contemporaries and friends, he is represented as 
ambitious, restless, changeable, bold, and presumptuous: he is 
stated also to have been a profound and extensive scholar, ac- 
curately acquainted with the Greek, Hebrew and Arabic lan- 
guages. [See Bayle — Article Morus.] 

It may be remarked that in the letters of Sarrau, Morus is 
more than once introduced under the name of Paris, in allusion, 
as it must be inferred, to his amorous propensities, and his favour 
with women. This frailty of his is generally made the subject 
of allusion wherever he is mentioned in the correspondence of his 
contemporary scholars : by whom also his intercourse with the 
servant girl of Salmasius is related without any reserve or intima- 
tion of doubt. The fact indeed, divested of the more atrocious 
circumstances imputed to it, seem3 to be indisputable — for it was 



LIFE OF MILTON. 41? 

him to give up the author of that publication, 
for which he had exposed himself to such 
unpleasant consequences, and Du Moulin, 
who was at that time in England, felt him- 
self to be in danger: but he was saved, as he 
says, by the pride of Milton, who, refusing to 
acknowledge himself in an error and per- 
sisting in his attack upon Morus, induced the 

one of the causes of the quarrel between Salmasius and Morus ; 
and he was pressed by his former friend and patron to marry the 
girl : but her character was much too light to admit of the idea 
of her having been seduced, or of her being made, (in the vulgar 
phrase,) an honest woman. Of the temper of this confidante of 
Madame de Saumaise's, a whimsical instance is related by Vos- 
sius, in a letter to N. Heinsius, dated from Amsterdam on the 
24th of November J 654. For the entertainment of my readers, 
I will transcribe the whole passage: lis ipsi (Salmasio) cum 
Moro. Cupit enim ut is Anglicanam suam in uxorem ducat, 
quod alter recusat. Verum isti duo boni amantes, qui nuper tarn 
suaviter et amice oscula jungebant, valde nunc sibi invicem sunt 
infensi. Ante quatriduum siquidem, cum forte Maurus huic 
nostrae occurrerat in vasta ista area, quae aedibus Salmasii adjacet* 
statim capillitium ejus invasit, pluribusque adfecit verberibus : 
neque eo contenta etiam fuste in ilium saevire conabatur, nisi 
bonus ille socius in horreum confugisset super struicem quandam, 
jactuque se vindicasset cespitum. Huic spectaculo non defuit 
ingens, spectatorum numerus, qui ex vicinia passim eo confluxe- 
rant. Vides quam omnes iis in aedibus sint yvvcLiKoy.^s^evot. 
Facile hinc possis conjicere falsos fuisse rumores qui de subacid 
Britannicd passim fuere sparsi, cum ilia potius Maururn sube- 
gerit. Vel si verus sit rumor, adparet non satis fuisse subactam. 
[Burman. Syllo. iii. 651.] 

Our women, as it appears by this anecdote, can on some 
occasions fight with the spirit of our men, 

2 B 



418 LITE OF MILTON 

government to suffer the real author of the 
offence to escape without notice. This how- 
ever, is not an accurate statement of the case. 
Early in the controversy Milton had been 
assured that Morus was not the writer of the 
" Regii sanguinis Clamor:'' but Milton was 
certain that Morus was the publisher of the 
work and the writer of the dedication. Mil- 
ton knew also that the name of Morus was 
higher in the literary world than that of Du 
Moulin ; and, regarding them both as joint 
parties in a bond, he conceived himself to be 
justified in calling upon the most responsible 
of the two for the payment of his debt. 
With respect to punishment, he would be 
averse from inflicting on his adversary any 
other than the brand of the pen; and would 
certainly be more inclined to conceal an ob- 
noxious writer than to expose him to the 
law. Du Moulin's triumph on his escape, 
to whatever cause he might be indebted for 
it, was certainly not inconsiderable, as the 
passage inserted in the note will sufficiently 
demonstrate. 2 

z Spectabam interea tacitus, nee sine lento risu foetum meutn 
ad alienas fores expositumj et caecum et furiosum Miltonum 
Andabatarum more pugnantem et aegopcexopsvov, a quo feriretur 
et quem contra feriret ignarum. At Morus, tantae invidiae 
impar, in regia causa frigere ccepit, & ' ' Clamoris" autborem Mil- 



LIFE OF MILTON. 419 

Having taken a general view of this con- 

tono indicavit. Enimvero in sua ad Miltoni maledicta respon- 
sione, duos adhibuit testes praecipuae apud perduelles fidei^ qui 
authorem probe nossent & rogati possent revelare. Unde sane 
mihi & capiti meo certissimum impendebat exitium. At mag- 
nus ille justitiae vindex, cui & hanc operam & hoc caput 
libens devoverara, per Miltoni superbiam salutem meam asse- 
ruit, ut ejus sapientiae solenne est ex malis bona, ex tenebris 
lucem elicere. Miltonus enim, qui plenis caninae eloquentiae 
velis in Moram invectus fuerat, quique id ferme unicum De- 
fensionis secundae suae fecerat argumentum, ut Mori vitam 
atque famam laceraret, adduci nunquam potuit, ut se tarn crasse 
hallucinatum esse /ateretur. Scilicet metuens ne csecitati ejus 
populus illuderet, eumque compararent grammaticorum pueri 
Catullo illi caeco apud Juvenalem, qui piscem Domitiano dona- 
tum laudaturus. 

plurima dixit 
In lasvum conversus, at illi dextra jacebat 
Bellua. 

Perseverante igitur Mil tono totum illud periculosi in Regem 
araoris crimen Moro impingere, non poterant caeteri perduelles 
sine magna boni patroni sui injuria alium a Moro tanti criminis 
reurn peragere. Cumque Miltonus me salvum esse mallet quam 
se ridiculum, hoc operae meae praemium tuli, ut Miltonum, quern 
inclementius acceperam, haberem patronum, & capitis mei se- 
dulum vTfeoa.(ntiorqv" 

This extract is made from a kind of prefatory epistle, intended 
by Du Moulin to accompany those furious iambics which he 
vented against Milton, in their second edition with <( the Regii 
sanguinis Clamor." Having been omitted however, by some 
accident or other, in its proper place, this exposition of the author's 
dangers in the royal cause was subsequently published in a miscel- 
laneous volume, printed at Cambridge in 16/0. Milton's blindness 
supplies the generous Du Moulin with many occasions of exultation 
and insult. The indifference or rather the pleasure, with which 
this worthy divine beholds the punishment, due to his own offence, 






420 LIFE OF MILTON. 

troversy, in which Milton's last productions 
are as distinguishable as his former ones for 
.spirit, vigour, and acuteness, it will be proper 
for us to return to his " Second Defence;" 
of which our notices have not yet been am- 
ple in proportion to its demands. It is in- 
deed filled with such interesting matter, that 
our readers would have cause to censure us 
if we were to pass over it with only common 
attention. From those parts of it, which re- 
late immediately to the author, we have more 
than once had occasion to insert extracts in 
our page, and of this portion of the work 
we shall now content ourselves with tran- 
scribing that passage which replies to the 
reproaches of his antagonist on his blind- 
inflicted on another, may be also worthy of remark. The senti- 
ment of the Epicurean poet, 

Suave etiam belli certamipa magna tueri 
Per campos iastructa tua sine parte pericli : 

was much less depraved than that discovered on this occasion by 
Du Moulin: for the battle, which he thus delighted to con- 
template without exposing himself to any participation of the 
danger, was the result of his own voluntary act, and a battle 
also in which his friend was suffering cruel wounds in his stead. 
In this man's conduct we are disgusted with complicated base* 
ness — with the most selfish and mean cowardice, united with the 
most egregious want of principle : — and yet did his sycophantic 
loyalty raise him to a high station in our church, and place him 
in a stall of the metropolitan cathedral, when he scarcely merited 
a stall in the stable of an inn. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 421 

ness and the pretended deformity of his 
person. 

Veniamus nunc ad mea crimina: estne 
quod in vit& aut moribus reprehendat? Certfe 
nihil. Quid ergo? Quod nemo nisi immanis 
ac barbarus fecisset, formam mihi ac caeci- 
tatem objectat. 

Monstrum horrendum., informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum. 

Nunquam existimabam equidem fore, ut 
de forma cum Cy elope certamen mihi esset; 
vertim statim se revocat. " Quanquam nee 
ingens, quo nihil est exilius, exsanguius, con- 
tractus." Tametsi virum nihil attinet de 
forma dicere, tandem quando hie quoque 
est unde gratias Deo agam et mendaces re- 
darguam, nfe quis (quod Hispanorum vulgus 
de haereticis, quos vocant, plus nimio sacer- 
dotibus suis credulum opinatur) ne forte 
cynocephalum quempiam, aut rhinocerota 
esse putet, dicam. Deformis quidem a ne- 
mine, quod sciam, qui modo me vidit, sum 
unquam habitus ; formosus necne, min&s la- 
boro; statural fateor non sum procerd: sed 
quae mediocri tamen quam parvae propior 
sit; sed quid si parv&, qud et sumrai saepe 
turn pace turn bello viri fuere, quanquam 
parva cur dicitur, quae ad virtutem satis 
magna est? Sed neque exilis admodum, eo 



422 LIFE OF MILTON. 

sane animo iisque viribus ut, cum aetas vi- 
taeque ratio sic ferebat, nee ferrum tractare 
nee stringere quotidiano usu exercitatus nes- 
cirem; eo accinctus, ut plerumque eram, 
cuivis vel mult6 robustiori exa3quatum me 
putabam, securus quid mihi quis injuriae vir 
viro inferre posset. Idem hodie animus, 
eaedem vires, oculi non iidem ; ita tamen 
extrinsecus illaesi, ita sine nube clari ac lu- 
cidi, ut eorum qui acutissimum cernunt: in 
hac solum parte, memet invito, simulator 
sum. In vultu, quo " nihil exsanguius" esse 
dixit, is manet eliamnum color exsangui et 
pallenti plane contrarius, lit quadragenario 
major vix sit cui non denis prope annis videar 
natu minor; neque corpore contracto neque 
cute. In his ego si uM ex parte mentior, 
multis millibus popularium meorum, qui de 
facie me norunt, exteris etiam non paucis, 
ridiculus merito sim: sin iste in re minimi 
necessaria tarn impudenter et gratuito men- 
dax comperietur, poteritis de reliquo eandem 
conjecturam facere. Atque hsec de forma 
mea vel coactus: de tua quanquam et con- 
temptissimam accepi, et habitantis in te im- 
probitatis atque malitiae vivam imaginem, 
neque ego dicere neque ullus audire curat. 
Utinam de ceecitate pariter liceret inhuma- 
num liunc refellere adversariurn: sed non 



LIFE OF MILTON, 423 

licet; feramus igitur: non est miserum esse 
caecum; miserum est caecitatem non posse 
ferre : quidni autetn feram, quod unum- 
quemque ita parare se oportet, ut si acci- 
dent non aegre ferat, quod et humanitus ac- 
cidere cuivis mortalium, et praestantissimis 
quibusdam atque optimis omni memorid 
viris accidisse sciam: sive illos memorem, 
vetustatis ultimae priscos vates ac sapientis- 
simos; quorum calamitatem et dii, ut fertur, 
multd potioribus donis compensarunt, et ho- 
mines eo honore affecerunt, ut ipsos incul- 
pare maluerint deos, quam caecitatem illis cri- 
mini dare. De augure Tiresia quod traditur, 
vulgo notum. De Phineo sic cecinit Apol- 
lonius in Argonauticis: 

— >'Qv$' do~<rov otffcero not,] Aio$ aura 

Xpsiovv ctTpsxsuj; lspo\ voov ctySgcctfOKri. 
Toy yea.) 01 yyjgas ^iv sir} fyvcuov ^aXXzv 
'Ek £' %Xsr 6<p$a,Xpt,otJv yXvitsgov <pao$. 

" Let us now come to the charge which 
he brings against me. Is there any thing in 
my life- or my morals on which his censure 
can fasten? Certainly nothing. What then 
is his conduct? That of which no one but a 
savage and a barbarian could be guilty 9 — 
he reproaches me with my form and my 
blindness. In his page I am — 

" A monster horrid, hideous, huge, and blind." 



424 LIFE OF MILTON. 

I never, indeed, imagined that, with respect 
to person, there would be instituted any com- 
petition between me and a cyclops. But my 
accuser immediately corrects himself: " So 
far, however, is he from huge, that a more 
meagre, bloodless, diminutive animal can no 
where be seen." Although it be idle for a 
man to speak of his own form, yet since, 
even in this particular instance, I have cause 
of thankfulness to God and the power of con- 
futing the falsehoods of my adversary, I will 
not be silent on the subject, lest any person 
should deem me, as the credulous populace of 
Spain are induced by their priests to believe 
those whom they call heretics, to be a kind 
of rhinoceros or a monster with a dog's head. 
By any man indeed, who has ever seen me, 
I have never, to the best of my knowledge, 
been considered as deformed — whether as 
handsome or not forms a less object of my 
concern. My stature, I confess not to be 
lofty ; but it approaches more to the middle 
height than to the low. If it were however 
even low, I should in this respect only be 
confounded with many who have eminently 
distinguished themselves in peace and in 
w r ar; and I know not why that human body 
should be called little which is sufficiently 



LIFE OF MILTON. 425 

large for all the purposes of human usefulness 
and perfection. When my age and the ha- 
bits of my life would permit, I accustomed 
myself to the daily exercise of the sword, and 
was not either so puny in body or so defi- 
cient in courage as not to think myself, with 
that weapon which I generally wore, to be 
secure in the assault of any man, hand to 
hand, how superior soever he might be to 
me in muscular strength. The spirit and the 
power, which I then possessed, continue un- 
impaired to the present day; my eyes only 
are not the same ; and they are as unble- 
mished in appearance, as lucid and free from 
spot, as those which are endued with the 
sharpest vision: in this instance alone, and 
much against my own inclination, am I a 
deceiver. My face, than which, as he says, 
nothing is more bloodless, still retains, at the 
age of more than forty, a colour the very re- 
verse of pale, and such as induces almost 
every one, who sees me, to consider me as 
ten years younger than I am; neither is my 
skin wrinkled, nor my body in any way 
shrunk. If 1 should misrepresent any of 
these circumstances, my falsehood must in- 
stantly be detected by thousands of my own 
countrymen, and by many foreigners, who 
are acquainted with my person, and to whose 



426 LIFE OF MILTON. 

ridicule and contempt I should justly be ex- 
posed: it might then be fairly concluded that 
he who, in an affair of no moment, could un- 
necessarily be guilty of a gross and wanton 
violation of truth, could not be deserving of 
credit in any thing which he asserted. Thus 
much have I been compelled to speak of 
my own person; — of yours, though I have 
been informed that it is the most contemp- 
tible and the most strongly expressive of the 
dishonesty and malice which actuate it, I am 
as little disposed to speak as others would be 
to hear. 

I wish that it were in my power, with the 
same facility with which I have repelled his 
other attacks, to refute the charge, which my 
unfeeling adversary brings against me, of 
blindness: but, alas! it is not in my power, 
and I must consequently submit to it. It is 
not, however, miserable to be blind: he only 
is miserable who cannot acquiesce in his 
blindness with fortitude. And why should 
I repine at a calamity, which every man s 
mind ought to be so prepared and disci- 
plined as to be able, on the contingency of 
its happening, to undergo with patience: a 
calamity to which man by the condition of 
his nature is liable; and which I know to 
have been the lot of some of the greatest and 



LIFE OF MILTON. 42 7' 

the best of my species. Among those, on 
whom it has fallen, I might reckon some of 
the wisest of the bards of remote antiquity, 
whose want of sight the Gods are said to 
have compensated with extraordinary and far 
more valuable endowments, and whose vir- 
tues were so venerated that men would ra- 
ther arraign the Gods themselves of injus- 
tice than draw from the blindness of these 
admirable mortals an argument of their guilt. 
What is handed down to us respecting the 
augur Tiresias is very commonly known. Of 
Phineus, Apollonius in his Argonautics thus 
sings — 

" Careless of Jove, in conscious virtue bold, 
His daring lips Heaven's sacred mind unfold. 
The God hence gave him years without decay j 
But robb'd his eyeballs of the pleasing day." 

But independently of its communications 
respecting its author, by which it is princi- 
pally recommended to us, the " Second De- 
fence" exhibits many striking passages and 
a variety of entertaining matter. It intro- 
duces to our notice many of the writer's re- 
publican friends, and, besides an animated 
address to Cromwell, which it is our inten- 
tion to extract, it presents us with an eloquent 
eulogy on Christina the Queen of Sweden. 
This extraordinary character was at this mo- 



428 



LIFE OF MILTON, 



meat renowned throughout Europe for her 
liberality, her erudition, and her patronage 
of the learned." On the favour of Milton 

a She was complimented in strains of as high panegyric as any 
that is to be found in Milton, by almost all the scholars of her 
time in Europe. In the letters of Sarrau, or Sarravius, she is al- 
ways mentioned in the most encomiastic terms, and is called the 
great Christina and the greatest of queens. This learned and able 
and upright man expresses envy for the happiness of Salmasius, 
Vossius, and the other scholars who were at her court, and could thus 
enjoy the charms of her conversation, and the sweet influence of 
her smiles. — " O beatam Suediam," he says to Vossius in a letter 
written from Paris Nov. 19, l64g, " tant& suarum fortunarum mo- 
deratrice ! O beatum Vossium ! O beatos omnes cui datum est 
suavi ejus praesentia, conspectu, colloquio et gratia frui!" — The 
verse of Sarravius is not less flattering to Christina than his prose. 
Of six distichs, which he wrote on a medal, representing the head 
of this queen, as a Minerva, on one side, and on the other a me- 
ridian sun, the two following are not the loaot full of com- 
pliment, — 

Si coluisse voles Phoebum & coluisse Minervam; 
Tu cole Christinam — Numen utrumque coles. 

Sol radios expande tuos : ecce zemula terris, 

Christina affulget lumine inocciduo. 

Sarravii Epis. 286. 

Christina was beloved by the people over whom she reigned; 
and her abdication was opposed by the strong and affectionate 
remonstrances of the Senate of Sweden. N. Heinsius, who was 
then at Stockholm, records this circumstance which is so honour- 
able to his royal patroness, in a letter written from that city at 
the precise period in question. Nihil non egit universus regni 
Senatus, ut ab hoc proposito Dominam avellerent: sed nimis alte 
ejus animo haeret impressa sententia vitae privatae instituendae, 
quam ut tolli aut mulari ulla ratione possit. This letter which is 
dated from Stockholm on the 29th of April 1054, is addressed to 
the writer's chief friend, Gronovius. Though by her abdication 
all his hopes of royal favour were to be blighted, and he was 



LIFE OF MILTON. 429 

the daughter of the great Adolphus had 

likely also to sustain much pecuniary loss, N. Heinsius on this 
and on every future occasion speaks of Christina with much affec- 
tion and respect: and yet this is the woman whose unhappy 
eccentricities Mr. Warton has delighted to expose, and to make 
them, with his utmost power, the objects of our ridicule and dis- 
gust. But she possessed sufficient taste to admire Milton's " De- 
fence of the People of England 3" an intercourse of praise had 
intervened between her and this great adversary of royal des- 
potism, — and by Mr. Warton, and the writers of his character 
and class, she was consequently to be degraded as much as pos- 
sible, and her memory to be loaded with as much ignominy as 
could be collected with assiduity from every quarter, and mer- 
cilessly thrown on it. Her later conduct, as it must be lamented, 
has supplied these posthumous enemies with too many materials 
for their ungenerous purpose: but with respect to her principal 
offence, in the estimation of these men, let us recollect that when 
she praised Milton, she praised him who has since become the 
subject of universal admiration; and that when Milton praised 
her, he praised a Queen who possessed the affections of a happy 
people; who extended the most liberal patronage to the learned, 
and who was the theme of almost unbounded panegyric with all 
the princes of European literature. The propriety of Milton's pane- 
gyric of Christina is admitted by his adversary Morus; who car- 
ries his admiration of her as far any of his contemporaries. Ad- 
verting to this part of Milton's " Second Defence," Morus says, 
Hinc ambitiosa digressio in illam, quae non obiter dici debet, sin- 
gularis exempli Regi nam 5 quae jam omnes omnium laudes merita, 
consecuta, longissimeque supergressa ; hoc unum non meruit, 
abs te laudari. [Alex. Mori Fides Publica, p. 60.] 

With reference to the provocation under which it was written, 
this reply of Morus is remarkably temperate and candid. As the 
writer of the dedication and as the editor of the " Regii Sanguinis 
Clamor," the offence of Morus was certainly great, and such as 
to exempt him from our pity under his sufferings: but when we 
compare him with Du Moulin, we must regard him as a liberal 
and honourable antagonist. 



430 LIFE OF MILTON. 

a particular claim in consequence of the 
praise which, though a sovereign, she had 
liberally given to his " Defence of the People 
of England;" and on all occasions he seems 
anxious to requite her with the most prodigal 
panegyric. Of this not only the passage,, to 
which I have now referred, is an instance, 
but the verses also, which, at a period, as 
w r e may conjecture, somewhat earlier than 
the present, he had written under a portrait 
of the Protector, transmitted as an official 
compliment to the northern Potentate from 
the fortunate usurper of England. To tran- 
scribe the prose eulogy would detain us too 
long from more interesting matters ; but the 
poetic compliment, at once concise and 
splendid, shall be inserted to gratify our 
readers. 

Bellipotens Virgo, septem regina trionum, 

Christina ! Arctoi lucida Stella poli ! 
Cernis quas merui dura sub casside rugas, 

Utque senex armis impiger ora teroj 
Invia fatorum dum per vestigia nitor, 

Exequor et populi fortia jussa manu. 
Ast tibi submittit frontem reverentior umbra: 

Non sunt hi vultus regibus usque truces. b 

b Some doubts have been raised about the author of these 
verses, and a. few, among whom is Mr. Warton, have assigned 
them to the pen of Andrew Marvell. For my own part I cannot 
find any reason to dispute Milton's title to them. To write 
them was evidently within the province of the Latin Secretary, 



LIFE OF MILTOtf. 431 

Imperial Maid, great arbitress of war ! 
Queen of the pole ! — yourself its brightest star ! 
Christina! view this helmet-furrow'd brow; 
This age, that arms have worn, but caniiOt bow; 
As through the pathless wilds of fate I press; 
And bear the people's purpose to success. 
Yet see! to you this front submits its pride: 
Thrones are not always by its frown defied. 

Before we proceed to exhibit the address 
to Cromwell, it will be proper to direct our 
attention to the state of the British public at 
this remarkable conjuncture. 

That part of the Long Parliament, which 

and, as they must have been composed before 1(554, in the April 
of which j r ear Christina abdicated her throne, and as Marvell was 
not associated in the office of Latin Secretary till 165/ , they must 
have been written when Milton sustained the duties of his place 
without an assistant. Is it likely then, I will ask, that he 
should solicit aid for the composing of eight verses, addressed 
to a person who was manifestly a great object of his regard? 
The notion entertained by Mr. Warton, that Milton, who was 
perpetually conversant with the classics and with Latin compo- 
sition, should by the disuse of a few years so far lose his faci- 
lity in the constructing of Latin verse, as to be unable to write 
it, strikes me as ludicrously absurd. The inference from their 
being found in a posthumous publication of Marvell's works is 
surely of no consequence. A friend might certainly transcribe a 
friend's verses, and place them by his own on the same subject, 
without suspecting that he was thus bringing the author's just 
claim to them into suspicion. Induced probably by the same 
reasons which have influenced my opinion in this instance, Bishop 
Newton, Dr. Birch, and the late ingenious editor of Paradise Re- 
gained, Mr. Dunster, have concurred in considering these verses 
as the property of Milton.. 



432 LIFE OF MILTON. 

had been permitted by Cromwell and the 
fanatic army to continue its sittings, and 
which, in derision, was called the Rump Par- 
liament, had conducted the political vessel 
with great ability and effect. It had lately 
been augmented by many of its old mem- 
bers who, having seceded in consequence of 
their opposition to the trial of the king, were 
now on their subscribing the engagement c 
re-admitted to their seats; and with their 
presence they imparted a more imposing spe- 
ciousness of aspect to the Legislative Assem- 
bly. If some of its laws betrayed the se- 
verity and narrowness of the presbyterian 
priesthood, the greater number of them dis- 
covered much political ability and were 
formed on a wide view of the public interest. 
The famous Navigation act, which has con- 
tributed so essentially to our present naval 
pre-eminence, was the offspring of its wis- 
dom; and, both in the field and in the ca- 
binet its talents for government were alike at- 
tested by success. By its prudent manage- 

e The form of this test, of the submission of the subject to 
the existing government, was simple and concise: it was no- 
thing more than a solemn promise " to be true and faithful to 
the government established without king or house of peers." 
The " Engagement" was substituted, on the death of the king, 
for the famous <f Solemn League and Covenant." 



LIFE OF MILTON. 433 

ment of the revenues of the stale, it possessed 
the means not only of paying its army and the 
servants of its civil establishment with punc- 
tuality, but of liberally rewarding their me- 
rits. If it were entitled however to the re- 
spect, it was either unable or not solicitous 
to conciliate the affection of the nation. 
Many of its measures had, in a high degree, 
been reprehensible and offensive. Besides 
the murder of the king, which its vote had 
ostensibly induced and of which it offered 
the pretended sanction, its frequent appoint- 
ment of High Courts of Justice, and its con- 
sequent disuse of Juries, for the trial of state- 
criminals, could not fail to excite the popular 
odium, whoever were the victims of these ir- 
regular tribunals; while the shameless viva- 
ciousness with which it refused to remit its 
grasp of political existence, without any re- 
ference to its just source of being in the 
people, laid its private ambition open to the 
most common observation, and exposed the 
futility of its pretensions to public virtue. The 
execution of Mr. Love, a leading presbyterian 
clergyman, who, till the ascendenc} r of the 
Independents and the death of the king, had 
actively promoted and had suffered in the 
republican cause, largely contributed to the 
unpopularity of this exhausted and self- 



434 LITE OF MILTON. 

dependent parliament. The crime, of which 
he stood convicted, was that of having corre- 
sponded with the exiled king and conspired 
against the commonwealth: but so great had 
been his merits to the parliamentary party, 
and so strong was the interest now exerted 
to save him, that the unrelenting severity, 
which conducted him to the block, was the 
subject of general reprobation. 

While it was thus declining in the favour 
of the nation, this usurping assembly beheld 
with increasing apprehension the power of 
its army, and the ascendency of its victorious 
general. 

However open to censure might have been 
the measures of the parliament, those of the 
army were fully as culpable and far more 
extraordinary. Its conduct indeed seems 
to be without precedent or consequent, stand- 
ing insulated and alone in the annals of the 
world. Well paid, highly disciplined, en- 
thusiastic in the cause of liberty, under the 
strong controll of religious principle, it aban- 
dons its principle, betrays its cause, and revolts 
against the power for whom it had assumed 
arms, by whose able management it had been 
cherished, and by whose superior counsels it 
had been directed to victory. But the in- 
tolerance of the Presbyterians was become 



LIFE OF MILTON* 435 

the leading object of resentment and of terror 
to the sectarists, who formed the body of 
the army ; and the religious phrenzy of these 
heated spirits was insusceptible of any long 
views of policy 5 or of any violent and self-aban^ 
doning system of patriotism. If the influence 
of such enlightened and liberal politicians as 
Selden and Whitelocke had prevailed in the 
Parliament over that of the Assembly of Di- 
vines, the concession of an unlimited tolera- 
tion would have preserved the army from 
those alarms, which alone shook it from its 
duty and, converting it immediately to the 
overthrow of the government, made it even- 
tually subservient to its own ruin. 

Aware of the advantages which would 
probably result from it to his own cause, 
Cromwell carefully watched and fomented 
the general agitation. In the diminished po- 
pularity of the Parliament, in the mutual 
jealousies of that assembly and the army, 
in the prevailing lassitude and discontent of 
the harassed people he saw and welcomed 
the means of his own personal aggrandise- 
ment. He had now reached a situation con- 
tiguous to that greatness which, only a short 
time before, had perhaps been removed from 
his most romantic and visionary expectation. 
Unlike to the first Caesar, who. aspiring to 



436 LIFE OF MILTOK. 

empire from the commencement of his poli- 
tical career, seems to have advanced by re- 
gular and measured steps to the possession 
of his object, Cromwell, floating loosely on 
the tide of events, was brought near to a 
throne which he had the boldness to seize 
and the ability to retain. Enthusiasm, which 
at first was the great moving spring of his 
conduct, became in the succeeding stages of 
his progress the instrument with which he 
worked; and from being the dupe of his own 
feelings, he grew to be the controller of those 
of other men. He never entirely indeed 
ceased to be the enthusiast: but, ambition 
for a time obtaining the ascendency in his 
bosom over the religious passion, he united 
in himself at last, with an inconsistency 
not uncommon in our poor nature, the op- 
posite characters of the zealot and the im- 
postor. When he performed his devotions 
with the common soldiers, and thus conci- 
liating their affections essentially promoted 
his own purposes and influence, he was not, 
as I am satisfied, wholly insincere; but had 
persuaded himself that he could thus allow- 
ably convert an act of religious duty into a 
mean of worldly interest. No man per- 
haps ever possessed in a higher degree that 
rapid and searching glance which can pene- 



LIFE OF MILTON. 437 

hate, and that dexterity which can shape to 
their proper uses human character and its 
multiform varieties. For the attainment of 
ends far different from those proposed to him- 
self by the holy Apostle, Cromwell was " all 
things to all men:" and could act with equal 
facility, on the demand of the immediate oc- 
casion, the commander or the buffoon. 

By the resignation of Fairfax, averse from 
marching against the Presbyterians in Scot- 
land, he was now advanced to the head of 
the army and, being freed by the death of 
Ireton d from the stern and inflexible repub- 
licanism of that popular and potent leader, 
he saw no insuperable obstacle between his 
hand and the sceptre of England. When he 
returned from the scenes of his triumph at 
Dunbar and Worcester, the sovereign power 
was in fact in his possession ; and the nation 
looked up to the Captain General, for with 
this high title he was now decorated, as to 
the arbiter of its fortunes and the destined 
restorer of its tranquillity. His promises 
were specious and alluring. Of religious to- 

d Ireton died of the plague at Limerick, on the 27th of Nov. 
165 1 . This seems to be the accurate date : — but some writers have 
placed his death on the 26th of the preceding September. For 
his steady republicanism, he is likened by Gilbert Burnet to 

Cassins. 



438 LIFE. OF MILTON. 

leration he was the sincere friend, and he 
earnestly professed his desire of convening a 
free parliament, and of settling the disturbed 
community either under an equal common- 
wealth or a limited monarchy. His dis- 
mission of the Long Parliament, 6 though ef- 
fected with some circumstances of violence 
and contumely, does not seem to have been 
felt by the nation as an obnoxious act. It 
appeared to be justified by the principle of 
self-defence, for, at the crisis to which things 
had been urged, either the General or the 
Parliament must have fallen; and to put a 
period to an usurpation seemed to be allow- 
able, by whatever hand the deed was ac- 
complished, His electing a new legislature, 
by his own authority f and without any ap- 
peal to the people, could not be a measure 
of the same dubious unpopularity: in its sup- 
port however might be pretended the dis- 
traction of the times, and the consequent 

e On the 19th of April, 1653. 
f In this instance certainly the people had nothing to do with 
the laws but to obey them; and I am rather surprised that the 
Prelate, (Dr. Horsley at that time bishop of Rochester,) who made 
this assertion,, did not advance in its support the example now 
before us, of a parliament elected by one man, and that man a 
victorious general. This parliament was assembled by a summons 
addressed in the name of the Captain General, &c. to the partU 
cular person who was to be a member of the legislature. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 439 

plea of political expediency. The puny Par- 
liament, which was thus assembled, and 
which, from the name of one of its leading 
members, 5 was called Barebone's Parliament, 
began its sittings on the fourth of July, h but 
after acting for a few months, as the instru- 
ment of Cromwell and with evident incom- 
petency to the task of government, it re- 
signed its power 1 into the hands of its poli- 
tical creator; and the Captain General, with 
his military council, found himself the master 
of a kind of derelict community. 

In this emergency the Council of Offi- 
cers, pretending for their deed a species of 
parliamentary delegation, undertook to pro- 
vide for the settlement of the public by plac- 
ing the government in the hands of their 
leader Cromwell, with the title of Lord Pro- 
tector of the Commonwealth of England. A 
provision was made for the convention of a 
triennial parliament, in the constitution of 
which some regard was discovered for the 
people's rights, and the Protector was in- 
stalled in his high office with great solemnity 
and magnificence on the 16th of December 
1653. 

It was immediately after this remarkable 

s A leather-seller of Fleet Street. h 1653. 

5 On the 13th of Dec. 1653. 



440 LIPE OF MILTON. 

occurrence that Milton, as it is probable, 
composed that part of his ' : Second Defence," 
which I am now about to transcribe. He 
could not be insensible to those egregious 
mockeries which had been practised on the 
people ; but it was natural for him not 
to abandon without extreme reluctance the 
hopes, which he had so long and so fondly 
cherished, of the Protector's rectitude of in- 
tention; and he seems desirous of urging 
this extraordinary man to a just and a ge- 
nerous use of power, with every motive which 
could be suggested by wise counsel or by 
eloquent panegyric, Milton certainly ap- 
proaches the master of England with ele- 
vated sentiments, and, even in his praises, 
discovers the equality of an erect and inde- 
pendent spirit. This the reader of the fol- 
lowing animated apostrophe, which forms a 
part only, though the far larger part of the 
whole masterly address, will not be permitted 
to doubt. My extract is preceded by a ra- 
pid and striking enumeration of those great 
events which had distinguished the two or 
three preceding years, — the recovery of Ire- 
land by one decisive blow; the subjugation 
of Scotland, which had been vainly attempted 
by the English monarchs during a period of 
eight hundred years; the great and crowning 



LIFE OF MILTOIST. 441 

victory at Worcester; the dismission of the 
Long Parliament: the meeting and the sub- 
sequent abdication of the succeeding Legis- 
lature. The deserted commonwealth is then 
represented as leaning for support on Crom- 
well alone; who by that best of rights, ac- 
knowledged by reason and derived from God, 
the right of superior talents and virtue, is 
in possession of the supreme power. The 
relative merits of the several titles of honour 
are afterwards discussed, and the magnani- 
mity of Cromwell, evinced by his rejection 
of the name of king, is the topic of praise 
with which my extract commences. 

k Tu igitur, Cromuelle, magnitudine ill& 
animi macte esto; te enim decet: tu patriae 
liberator, libertatis auctor, custosque idem et 

k It is remarkable that the magnanimity and high tone of this 
address of Milton's to the great Protector, struck Morus, and was 
objected by him to his adversary as an evidence of overweening 
pride and an imperious spirit: and yet has this very address been 
adduced in our days by the enemies of our author to prove his sy- 
cophancy and the mean accommodation of his principles! ! — Let 
us attend to the observations made by Morus on the subject. 
" Quae quidem omnia spiritus tibi tam altos induerunt, ut prox- 
imus a primo censeri concupiveris, adeoque celsissimo Cromuello 
c.elsior appareas interdum ; quern sine ulld honoris prcefatione fa^ 
miliariter appel/as, quern specie lauda?itis doces, cut leges dictas, 
titulos circumscribis, munia prcescribis, consilia suggeris, et, si 
secus fecerit , minas ingeris. 111! arma et imperium concedis, in- 
genium tibi togamque vindicas. [Alex. Mori Fides Publia. 
P. 7% 73.] 



442 LIFE OF MILTON. 

conservator, neque graviorem personam ne- 
que augustiorem suscipere potes aliam; qui 
non modo regum res gestas, sed heroum quo- 
que nostrorum fabulas factis exsuperasti. Co- 
gita saepius, quam caram rem ab qu&m card 
parente tua, libertatem a patria tibi com- 
mendatam atque concreditam, apud te de- 
positam habes; quod ab electissimis gentis 
universae viris ilia modo expectabat, id nunc 
a te uno expectat, per te unum consequi 
sperat. Reverere tantam de te expectationem, 
spem patriae de te unicam; reverere vultus et 
vulnera tot fortium virorum, quotquot, te 
duce, pro libertate tarn strenue decertarunt; 
manes etiam eorum qui in ipso certamine 
occubuerunt: reverere exterarum quoque ci- 
vitatum existimationem de nobis atque ser- 
mones; quantas res de libertate nostra tarn 
fortiter parta, de nostra republica tarn glo- 
riose exort&, sibi polliceantur: quae si tarn 
cito quasi aborta evanuerit, profeclo nihil 
aeque dedecorosum huic genti atque puden- 
dum fuerit : teipsum denique reverere, ut 
pro qua adipiscend& libertate tot aerumnas 
pertulisti, tot pericula adiisti, earn adeptus, 
violatam per te aut ulla in parte imminutam 
aliis ne sinas esse. Profectd tu ipse liber 
sine nobis esse non potes; sic ,enim natur^ 
comparatum est, ut qui aliorum libertatem 



LIFE OP MILTON. 443 

occupat, suam ipse primus omnium amittat; 
seque primum omnium intelligat servire: at- 
que id quidem non injuria. At verd, si pa- 
tronus ipse libertatis et quasi tutelaris deus, 
si is, quo nemo justior, nemo sanctior est 
habitus, nemo vir melior, quam vindicavit 
ipse earn postmodern invaserit, id non ipsi 
tanttim, sed universae virtutis ac pietatis ra- 
tioni perniciosum ac lethale propemodum sit 
necesse est: ipsa honestas, ipsa virtus decox- 
isse videbitur, religionis angusta fides, exis- 
timatio perexigua in posterum erit, quo gra- 
vius generi humano vulnus, post illud pri- 
mum, infligi nullum poterit. Onus longe 
gravissimum suscepisii, quod te penitus ex- 
plorabit, totum te atque intimum perscruta- 
bitur, atque ostendet quid tibi animi, quid 
virium insit, quid ponderis; vivatne in te 
verb ilia pietas, fides, justitia, animique mo- 
deratio, ob quas evectum te prse ceteris Dei 
numine ad hanc summam dignitatem credi- 
mus. Tres nationes validissimas consilio re- 
gere, populos ab institutis pravis ad melio- 
rem quam antehac frugem ac disci pi i nam 
velle perducere, remotissimas in paries sol- 
licitam mentem cogitationesque immittere, 
vigilare, praevidere, nullum laborem recu- 
sare, nulla voluptatum blandimenta non sper- 
nere, divitiarum atque potentiae ostentatio- 



444 LIFE OF MILTON. 

nem fugere, haec sunt ilia ardua prae quibus 
bellum ludus est; haec te ventilabunt atque 
excutient, haec virum poscunt divino fultum 
auxilio, divino penfe colloquio monitum at- 
que edoctum. Quae tu et plura saepenu- 
mero quin tecum reputes atque animo re- 
volvas, non dubito: uti et illud, quibus po- 
tissimum queas modis et ilia maxima perfi- 
cere, et libertatem salvam nobis reddere et 
auctiorem. Quod meo quidem judicio, haud 
alia ratione recti us effeceris, quam si primum 
quos laborum atque discriminum comites 
habuisti, eosdem, quod facis, conciliorum 
socios cum primis adhibueris; viros sane et 
modestissimos, et integerrimos, et fortissimos; 
quos tot mortes conspectae, tot strages ante 
ora editae, non ad crudelitatem aut duritiem 
animi, sed ad justitiam et numinis reveren- 
tiam et humanae sortis miserationem, ad 
libertatem denique eo acriils retinendam eru- 
dierunt, quo gravioribus ejus caus& periculis 
ipsi suum caput objecere. Non illi quidem 
ex colluvione vulgi aut advenarum, non 
turba collectitia, sed melioris plerique notae 
cives, genere vel nobili vel non inhonesto, 
fortunis vel amplis vel mediocribus; quid si 
ipsa paupertate aliqui commendatiores? quos 
non praeda convocavit, sed difficillima tem- 
pora, rebus maximk dubiis saepe adversis, ad 



LIFE OF MILTON, 445 

liberandam tyrannide rempublicam excita- 
runt; non in tuto aut curia sermones inter se 
atque scntentias tan turn, sed manus cum hoste 
conserere paratos. Quod nisi spes semper in- 
finitas atque inanes persequemur, in quibus 
tandem mortalium sisti aut confidi possit 
non video, si his horumque similibus fides 
non habebitur. Quorum fidelitatis certissi- 
mum pignus et indubitatum habemus, qudd 
pro republica vel mortem oppetere, si ita sors 
tulisset, non recus&rint; pietatis, quod implo- 
rato suppliciter Dei auxilio, totiesque ab eo 
insigniter adjuti, a quo auxilium petere ei- 
dem gloriam tribuere omnem rerum prospere 
gestarum consueverint; justitiae, qu6d etiam 
regem in judicium adduxerint, damnato parci 
noluerint: moderations, quod et earn experti 
jam diu sumus, et, quam ipsi sibi peperere. 
pacem, si eorundem per injuriam rumpatur, 
quae mala inde oritura sunt ipsi primi sint 
persensuri, ipsi prima vulnera suis corpori- 
bus excepturi, deque suis omnibus fortunis 
atque ornamentis feliciter jam partis rursus 
dimicaturi; fortitudinis denique, qu6d nulli 
unquam libertatem feliciils aut fortius recu- 
peraverint; ne arbitremur alios, alios posse 
diligentiils conservare. 1 

1 P. W. v.— 250. 



446 LITE OF MILTON. 

"Proceed then, O Cromwell; and exhi- 
bit, under every circumstance, the same lof- 
tiness of mind; for it well becomes you and 
is consistent with your greatness. The de- 
liverer, as you are, of your country, the au- 
thor, the guardian, the preserver of her liberty, 
you can assume no additional character more 
important or more august:" 1 since not only 
the actions of our kings, but the fabled ex- 
ploits of our heroes are overcome by your 
achievements. Reflect then frequently, (how 
dear alike the trust, and the parent from 
whom you have received it!) that to your 
hands your country has commended and 
confided her freedom; that, what she lately 
expected from her choicest representatives, 
she now hopes exclusively from you. O re- 
verence this high confidence, this hope of 
your country relying exclusively upon your- 
self: reverence the countenances and the 
wounds of those brave men, who have so 

m It may be proper to remark that the allusion in this place 
is not to Cromwell's rejection of the crown, when offered to him 
by the Parliament ; for this event happened in 1656, more than 
two years after the period now immediately in question j but to 
the result of a consultation on the subject, just before the dis- 
mission of the Long Parliament, between Cromwell and some 
of the principal men of the nation whom he considered as 
friendly to his views ; on which occasion, Whitelocke strongly 
dissuaded him from assuming the title of king. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 447 

nobly struggled for liberty under your au- 
spices, as well as the manes of those who 
have fallen in the conflict: reverence also 
the opinion and the discourse of foreign com- 
munities; their lofty anticipations with re- 
spect to our freedom so valiantly obtained — 
to our republic so gloriously established, of 
which the speedy extinction would involve 
us in the deepest and the most unexampled 
infamy: reverence, finally, yourself! and 
suffer not that liberty, for the attainment of 
which you have encountered so many perils 
and have endured so many hardships, to sus- 
tain any violation from your own hands, or any 
from those of others. Without our freedom, 
in fact, you cannot yourself be free : for it is 
justly ordained by nature that he who in- 
vades the liberty of others shall in the very 
outset lose his own, and be the first to feel 
that servitude which he has induced. But if 
the very patron, the tutelary Deity as it were 
of freedom; — if the man, most eminent for 
justice, and sanctity, and general excellence 
should assail that liberty which he has as- 
serted, the issue must necessarily be perni- 
cious, if not fatal, not only to the aggressor 
but, to the entire system and interests of 
piety herself: honour and virtue would in- 
deed appear to be empty names; the credit 



448 LIFE OF MILTON. 

and character of religion would decline and 
perish under a wound more deep than any 
which, since the first transgression, had been 
inflicted on the race of man. 

You have engaged in a most arduous 
undertaking, which will search you to the 
quick; which will scrutinize you through and 
through; which will bring to the severest test 
your spirit, your energy, your stability; which 
will ascertain whether you are really actuated 
by that living piety, and honour, and equity, 
and moderation which seem, with the favour 
of God, to have raised you to your present 
high dignity. To rule with your counsels 
three mighty realms, in the place of their 
erroneous institutions to introduce a sounder 
system of doctrine and of discipline, to per- 
vade their remotest provinces with unremit- 
ting attention and anxiety, vigilance and fore- 
sight; to decline no labours, to yield to no 
blandishments of pleasure, to spurn the 
pageantries of wealth and of power — these 
are difficulties in comparison with which 
those of war are the mere levities of play: 
these will sift and winnow you; these demand 
a man sustained by the divine assistance, tu- 
tored and instructed almost by a personal 
communication with his God. These and 
more than these you often, as I doubt not, 



LIFE OP MILTON. 449 

revoke in your mind and make the subjects 
of j r our deepest meditation, greatly solicitous 
how most happily they may he achieved, and 
your country's freedom be strengthened and 
secured : and these objects you cannot, in 
my judgment, otherwise effect than by ad- 
mitting, as you do, to an intimate share of 
your counsels those men, who have already 
participated your toils and your dangers; — 
men of the utmost moderation, integrity, and 
valour ; not rendered savage or austere by 
the sight of so much bloodshed and of so 
many forms of death; but inclined to justice, 
to the reverence of the Deity, to a sympathy 
with human suffering, and animated for the 
preservation of liberty with a zeal strengthened 
by the hazards which for its sake they have 
encountered ; men not raked together from 
the dregs of our own or of a foreign popu- 
lace — not a band of mercenary adventurers, 
but men chiefly of superior condition; in 
extraction, noble or reputable; with respect 
to property, considerable or competent, or 
in some instances deriving a stronger claim 
to our regard, even from their poverty itself; 
men, not convened by the lust of plunder, 
but, in times of extreme difficulty, amid cir- 
cumstances generally doubtful and often al- 
most desperate, excited to vindicate their 

2 o 



450 LIFE OF MILTON. 

country from oppression ; and prompt, not 
only in the safety of the senate-house to wage 
the war of words, but to join battle with the 
enemy on the field. If we will then renounce 
the idleness of never-ending and fallacious 
expectation, I see not in whom, if not in 
these and in such as these, we can place re- 
liance or trust. Of their fidelity we have 
the surest and most indisputable proof in the 
readiness which they have discovered even 
to die, if it had been their lot, in the cause 
of their country; of their piety, in the de- 
votion with which, having repeatedly and suc- 
cessfully implored the protection of Heaven, 
they uniformly ascribed the glory to Him 
from whom they had solicited the victory; of 
their justice, in not exempting even their 
king from trial or from execution; of their 
moderation, in our own experience and in 
the certainty that, if their violence should 
disturb the peace which they have esta- 
blished, they would themselves be the first to 
feel the resulting mischiefs, themselves would 
receive the first wounds in their own bodies, 
while they were again doomed to struggle for 
all their fortunes and honours now happily 
secured; of their fortitude, lastly, in that 
none ever recovered their liberty with more 
bravery or effect, to give us the assurance 



LIFE OF MILTON 451 

that none will ever watch over it with more 
solicitous attention and care." 

I cannot prevail on myself to leave this 
interesting production before I present to my 
readers the striking paragraphs with which 
it concludes. 

Ad me quod attinet, quocunque res re- 
dierit, quam ego operam meam maximk 
ex usu reipublicae futuram judicavi, haud 
gravatim certfe et, ut spero, haud frustra im- 
pendi; meaque anna pro libertate, non so- 
liim ante fores extuh, sed etiam iis M lath 
sum usus, ut factorum minimfe vulgarium jus 
atque ratio et apud nostros et apud exteros 
explicata, defensa, atque bonis certe omnibus 
probata, et ad meorum civium summam lau* 
dem et posterorum ad exemplum praeclare 
constet. Si postrema primis non satis re-* 
sponderint, ipsi viderint; ergo quae eximia, 
quae excelsa, quae omni laude prope majora 
fuere, iis testimonium, prope dixerim monu- 
mentum perhibui haud citd interiturum; et 
si aliud nihil, certfe fidem meam liberavi. 
Quemadmodum autem poeta is qui epicus 
Tocatur, si quis paul6 accuratior minim6- 
que abnormis est, quem heroem versibus ca- 
nendum sibi proponit, ejus non vitam om- 
nem, sed unam fere vitae actionem, Achillis 
put& ad Trojam, vel Ulyssis reditum, vel 



452 LITE OF MILT0 3ST. 

iEncae in Italian) adventum ornandum sibi 
sumit, reliquas praetermittit; ita mihi quoque 
vel ad oflicium vcl ad excusationem satis 
fuerit unam saltern popularium meorum he- 
roice rem gcstani exornasse; reliqua praete- 
reo — omnia universi populi praestare quis 
possit? Si post tarn fortia facinora foedius de- 
liqueritis, si quid vobis indignum commise- 
ritis, loquetur perfecto posteritas, et judi- 
cium f'eret; jacta strenue fundamenta fuisse, 
praeclara initia, imnio plusquam initia; sed 
qui opus cxaedincarent, qui fastigium impo- 
nerent, non sine commotione quadam animi 
desiderabit; tantis incoeptis, tantis virtutibus 
non adfuisse perseverantiam dolebit; ingen- 
tem gloriae segetem, et maximarum rerum 
gerendarum materiam praebitamVidebit, sed 
materiae defuisse viros: non defuisse qui mo- 
nere recta, hortari, incitare, qui egregie turn 
facta turn qui fecissent condecorare, et 
victuris in omne aevum celebrare laudibus 
potuerit. 

u For myself, whatever may be the final 
result, such efforts as in my own judgment 
were the most likely to be beneficial n to the 
commonwealth, I have made without re- 
luctance, though not, as I trust, without ef- 

» P. W. v. 266. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 453 

feet: I have wielded my weapons for liberty 
not only in oar domestic scene, but on a far 
more extensive theatre; that the justice and 
the principle of our extraordinary actions, 
explained and vindicated both at home and 
abroad and confirmed in the general appro- 
bation of the good, might be unquestionably 
established, as w r ell for the honour of my com- 
patriots as for precedents to posterity. That 
the conclusion prove not unworthy of such 
a commencement, be it my countrymen's to 
provide: — it has been mine to deliver a testi- 
mony, I had almost said to erect a monument 
which will not soon decay, to deeds of great- 
ness and of glory almost transcending human 
panegyric ; and, if I have accomplished no- 
thing further, I have assuredly discharged 
the whole of my engagement. As the bard 
however who is denominated Epic, if he 
confine his work a little within certain canons 
of composition, proposes to himself for a 
subject of poetical embellishment not the 
whole life of his hero, but some single action, 
(such as the wrath of Achilles, the return of 
Ulysses, or the arrival in Italy of iEneas,) 
and takes no notice of the rest of his con- 
duct; so will it suffice, either to form my vin- 
dication or to satisfy my duty, that I have 



454 



LIFE OF MILTON. 



recorded in heroic narrative one only of my 
fellow-citizen's achievements. The rest I omit; 
for who can declare all the great actions of a 
whole people? If, after such valiant exploits, 
you fall into gross delinquency, and perpe- 
trate any thing unworthy of yourselves, pos- 
terity will not fail to discuss and to pronounce 
sentence on the disgraceful deed. The foun- 
dation they will allow indeed to have been 
firmly laid, and the first (nay more than the 
first) parts of the superstructure to have been 
erected with success; but with anguish they 
will regret that there were none found to carry 
it forward to completion; that such an enter- 
prise and such virtues were not crowned by 
perseverance; that a rich harvest of glory and 
abundant materials for heroic achievement 
were prepared; but that men were wanting 
to the illustrious opportunity — while there 
wanted not a man to instruct, to urge, to sti- 
mulate to action, — a man who could call fame 
as well upon the acts as the actors, and could 
spread their celebrity and their names over 
lands and seas to the admiration of all future 
ages/'' 

This work, with a compliment from its au- 
thor, was presented to the Protector by An- 
drew Marvell; whose letter to his friend on 



LIFE OF MILTON, 455 

the occasion was first published by Doctor 
Birch, and will be found in the° note. 

° Honoured Sir, 

" I did not satisfy myself in the account I 
gave you of presenting your book to my lord, although it seemed 
to me that I wrote to you all, which the messenger's speedy 
return the same night from Eton would permit me : and I 
perceive that by reason of that haste I did not give you satis- 
faction neither, concerning the delivery of your letter at the 
same time. Be pleased therefore to pardon me, and know 
that I tendered them both together. But my lord read not the 
letter while I was with himj which I attributed to our dis- 
patch, and some other business tending thereto, which I there- 
fore wished ill to, so far as it hindered an affair much better 
and of greater importance, I mean that of reading your letter. 
And to tell you truly mine own imagination, I thought that he 
would not open it while I was there, because he might suspect 
that I, delivering it just upon my departure, might have brought 
in it some second proposition, like to that which you had be- 
fore made to him by your letter to my advantage. However, I 
assure myself that he has since read it, and you that he did then 
witness all respect to your person, and as much satisfaction 
concerning your work as could be expected from so cursory a 
review, and so sudden an account as he could then have of it 
from me. 

Mr. Oxenbridge, at his return from London, will, I know, 
give you thanks for his book, as I do with all acknowledgment 
and humility for that you have sent me. I shall now study it 
even to the getting it by heart, esteeming it, according to my 
poor judgment (which yet I wish were so right in all things else) 
as the most compendious scale, for so much, to the height of 
the Roman eloquence. When I consider how equally it turns, 
and rises with so many figures, it seems to me a Trajan's column, 
in whose winding ascent we see embossed the several monuments 
of your learned victories : and Salmasius and Morus make up as 
great a triumph as that of Decebalus, whom too, for ought I 



456 



LIFE OE MILTON". 



Colonel Overton, of whom the writer speaks 
with so much interest, was one of those 
steady republicans whom Cromwell, unable 
to conciliate, was under the necessity of 
securing. After a previous imprisonment 
in the tower, Overton was confined during 
the Protector's life in the island of Jersey; 
and obtained his liberty from the Parliament, 
a short time only before the Restoration. 
Whether any further notice was taken by 
Cromwell of Milton's present we are not in- 
formed: but we may be assured that he was 
not on the list of the Protector's peculiar 
friends, and that the Secretary would easily 
be reconciled to the consequences of exclu- 
sion from his em peer's favour b} r the con- 
sciousness of commanding his respect. 

With the " Second Defence of the People 



know, you shall have forced, as Trajan the other, to make them- 
selves away out of a just desperation. 

1 have an affectionate curiosity to know what becomes of 
colonel Overton's business, and am exceeding glad to think 
that Mr. Skinner has got near you 5 the happiness which I at 
the same time congratulate to him, and envy, there being none 
who doth, if I may so say, more jealously honour you than, 
Honoured Sir, 

Your most affectionate humble servant, 



Eton, June 2, 1654, 



Andrew Marvell. 



For my most honoured friend, John Milton, Esq. Secretary for the 
Foreign Affairs, at his House in Petty France, Westminster. 



LIFE OF MILTON 457 

of England" and the two subsequent replies 
to Moms, Milton closed his great controver- 
sial labours ; and endeavoured among his 
studies to retire from the mortification and 
disappointment, which he necessarily must 
have felt in consequence of the fuller exhi- 
bition of his hero's perfidy and despotism. 
He continued indeed to serve his country, 
in the character of her Latin secretary, on 
the same principle, as we may fairly con- 
clude, which induced Blake to extend her 
dominion upon the ocean, and Sir Matthew 
Hale to be the interpreter of her laws at 
the head of the Common Pleas : but his 
disapprobation of the present state of things 
is evident from more than one of his fa- 
miliar letters; and he seems to have ac- 
quiesced under the existing evil only as it 
was irremediable, or as it was temporary, 
or as it appeared to be inferior in degree 
to that of the return of the royalists into 
power with their exiled and exasperated 
monarch. 

He was now engaged in the prosecution 
of three great works, a history of England, 
a thesaurus of the Latin language on the 
plan of that by Stephens, and an epic poem. 
Of the first of these literary labours we have 
already said so much, that little is now left 



458 LITE OF MILTON. 

to be remarked, — unless it be that, previous 
to its publication in 1670, it was mutilated 
by the barbarian caprice of the licenser, and 
deprived of one of its most spirited and 
brilliant passages. In 1681, this reprobated 
part was separately printed, and it was af- 
terwards re-admitted to its proper place in 
that edition of the author's prose- works, which 
was published in 1738. As it obtains a kind 
of peculiar interest from its rejection by the 
licenser, and as it offers to us the observations 
of a great contemporary mind on the con- 
duct of the Long Parliament and the Assem- 
bly of Divines, a portion of it shall be laid 
before our readers, to whom it will at the 
same time supply a specimen of the author's 
historic composition. 

" For a parliament being called, to re- 
dress many things as it was thought, the 
people with great courage, and expectation 
to be eased of what discontented them, chose 
to their behoof in parliament such as they 
thought best affected to the public good, and 
some indeed men of wisdom and integrity; 
the rest, (to be sure the greater part,) whom 
wealth or ample possessions, or bold and ac- 
tive ambition (rather than merit) had com- 
mended to the same place. 

But when once the superficial zeal and 



LIFE OF MILTOX. 459 

popular fumes that acted their new magi- 
stracy were cooled and spent in them, strait 
every one betook himself (setting the com- 
monwealth behind, his private ends before) 
to do as his own profit or ambition led him. 
Then was justice delayed, and soon after de- 
nied : spite and favour determined all : 
hence faction, thence treachery, both at 
home and in the field: every where wrong, 
and oppression: foul and horrid deeds com- 
mitted daily, or maintained, in secret or in 
open. Some who had been called from shops 
and warehouses, without other merit, to sit 
in supreme councils and committees, (as their 
breeding; was) fell to huckster the common- 
wealth. Others did thereafter as men could 
sooth and humour them best; so he who 
would give most, or under covert of hy- 
pocritical zeal insinuate basest, enjoyed un- 
worthily the rewards of learning and fide- 
lity; or escaped the punishment of his crimes 
and misdeeds. Their votes and ordinances, 
which men looked should have contained the 
repealing of bad laws and the immediate 
constitution of better, resounded with nothing 
else but new impositions, taxes, excises; 
yearly, monthly, weekly. Not to reckon the 
offices, gifts, and preferments bestowed and 
shared among themselves: they in the mean 



460 LIFE OP MILTON. 

while, who were ever faithfullest to this cause, 
and freely aided them in person or with 
their substance, when they durst not compel 
either, slighted and bereaved after of their 
just debts by greedy sequestrations, were 
tossed up and down after miserable attend- 
ance from one committee to another with 
petitions in their hands, yet either missed the 
obtaining of their suit, or though it were at 
length granted, (mere shame and reason oft- 
times extorting from them at least a show of 
justice,) yet by their sequestrators and sub- 
committees abroad, men for the most part of 
insatiable hands and noted disloyalty, those 
orders were commonly disobeyed: which for 
certain durst not have been, without secret 
compliance, if not compact with some supe- 
riors able to bear them out. Thus were their 
friends confiscate in their enemies, while they 
forfeited their debtors to the state, as they 
called it, but indeed to the ravening seizure 
of innumerable thieves in office ; yet were 
withal no less burdened in all extraordinary 
assessments and oppressions, than those whom 
they took to be disaffected : nor were we hap- 
pier creditors to what we called the state, 
than to them who were sepuestered as the 
state's enemies. 

For that faith which ought to have been 



LIFE OT MILTON. 46l 

kept as sacred and inviolable as any thing 
holy, ' the Public Faith/ after infinite sums 
received, and all the wealth of the church 
not better employed, but swallowed up into 
a private gulf, was not ere long ashamed 
to confess bankrupt. And now beside the 
sweetness of bribery and other gain, with 
the love of rule, their own guiltiness and the 
dreaded name of Just Account, which the 
people had long called for, discovered plainly 
that there were of their own number, who 
secretly contrived and fomented those trou- 
bles and combustions in the land, which 
openly they sat to remedy; and would con- 
tinually find such work, as should keep them 
from being ever brought to that Terrible 
Stand of laying down their authority for lack 
of new business, or not drawing it out to any 
length of time, though upon the ruin of a 
whole nation. 

And if the state were in this plight, re- 
ligion was not in much better ; to reform 
which, a certain number of divines were 
called, neither chosen by any rule or custom 
ecclesiastical, nor eminent for either piety or 
knowledge above others left out; only as 
each member of parliament in his private 
fancy thought fit, so elected one by one. 
The most part of them were such as had 



462 LIFE OF MILTON. 

preached and cried down, with great show 
of zeal, the avarice and pluralities of bishops 
and prelates; that one cure of souls was a 
full employment for one spiritual pastor how 
able soever, if not a charge rather above hu- 
man strength. Yet these conscientious men 
(ere any part of the work done for which 
they came together, and that on the public 
salary) wanted not boldness, to the ignominy 
and scandal of their pastor-like profession 
and especially of their boasted reformation, 
to seize into their hands, or not unwillingly 
to accept (besides one, sometimes two or 
more of the best livings) collegiate master- 
ships in the universities, rich lectures in the 
city, setting sail to all winds that might blow 
gain into their covetous bosoms: by which 
means these great rebukers of non-residence, 
among so many distant cures, were not 
ashamed to be seen so quickly pluralists and 
non-residents themselves, to a fearful con- 
demnation doubtless by their own mouths. 
And yet the main doctrine, for which they 
took such pay and insisted upon with more 
vehemence than gospel, was but to tell us in 
effect that their doctrine was worth nothing, 
and the spiritual power of their ministry 
less available than bodily compulsion; per- 
suading the magistrate to use it, as a stronger 



XIFE OF MILTON. 463 

means lo subdue and bring in conscience, 
than evangelical persuasion: distrusting the 
virtue of their own spiritual weapons, which 
were given them, if they be rightly called, 
with full warrant of sufficiency to pull down 
all thoughts and imaginations that exalt 
themselves against God. But while they 
taught compulsion without convincement, 
which long before they complained of as 
executed unchristianly against themselves; 
these intents are clear to have been no better 
than antichristian: setting up a spiritual ty- 
ranny by a secular power, to the advancing 
of their own authority above the magistrate, 
whom they would have made their execu- 
tioner to punish church-delinquencies, where- 
of civil laws have no cognisance. 

And well did their disciples manifest 
themselves to be no better principled than 
their teachers; trusted with committeeships 
and other gainful offices, upon their com- 
mendations for zealous and (as they sticked 
not to term them) godly men; but executing 
their places, like children of the devil, un- 
faithfully, unjustly, unmercifully, and, where 
not corruptly, stupidly. So that between 
them, the teachers, and these, the disciples, 
there hath not been a more ignominious and 
mortal wound to faith, to piety, to the work 



464 LIFE OF MILTON. 

of reformation, nor more cause of blasphem- 
ing given to the enemies of God and truth, 
since the first preaching of reformation." 

The attention of Milton to his Latin the- 
saurus was not productive of any very pro- 
fitable result. The materials, which he had 
amassed, occupied in manuscript the bulk 
of three large folios: but they were left by 
him in too indigested a state to be fit for 
publication: it is said, however, that they 
were advantageously employed by the edi- 
tors of the Cambridge dictionary/ to whom 
they were probably given by Philips. This 
work, for the execution of which his state of 
blindness must have peculiarly disqualified 
him, seems to have formed, till the hour of 
his death, a part of that change of literary 
exercise in which he delighted; and if we re- 
flect upon the circumstance, we must cer- 
tainly be astonished at the mind, which with 
all its energies could thus instantaneously 
pass from invention to compilation, from the 
luxurious sports of fancy to the dry and 
barren drudgeries of verbal recollection. 

Of the third object, on which our au- 
thor's powers were at this period exerted, his 
immortal epic, I shall forbear to speak till 

v Published in 4to in l6f)3. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 465 

the time of its completion and publication. 
Some great production in the highest region 
of poetry had been, as we have observed, in 
his contemplation from the commencement 
nearly of his literary life. The idea accom- 
panied him to Italy, where with a more de- 
fined object it acquired a more certain shape 
from the example of Tasso, and the con- 
versation of Tasso's friend, the accomplished 
Marquis of Villa. From this moment it 
seems to have been immoveably fastened in 
his mind; and, though for a season oppressed 
and overwhelmed by the incumbent duties of 
controvers}% its root was full of life and preg- 
nant with vigorous vegetation. At the time, 
of which we are speaking, (the end of 1655 
and the beginning of 1656) the mighty work, 
according to Philips, was seriously under- 
taken; and it is curious to reflect on the stea- 
diness of its growth under a complication of 
adverse circumstances; and to see it, like 
a pine on the rocks of Norway, ascending to 
its majestic elevation beneath the inclemency 
of a dreary sky, and assailed in the same mo- 
ment by the fury of the ocean at its feet, and 
the power of the tempest above its head. 

In this variety of strong and effective in- 
tellectual exertion did Milton pass his hours 
during the usurpation of Cromwell, discharg- 



2 II 



466" LIFE OF MILTOX. 

ing of course the duties of his secretaryship, 
but neither engaging in controversy nor ad- 
dressingthe public on any topic of political dis- 
quisition. In 1655, he composed, in a strain 
of peculiar elegance, the manifesto issued by 
the Protector to justify his war with Spain : 
and in 16*57, Andrew Marvell, a man of whom 
I shall say more in a note, q was associated in 

i Andrew Marvell is a character of too much importance, in 
the history of Milton and in that of man, to be passed over with- 
out some particular attention. He was born in lfj20, in the town 
of Hull, of which his father was the minister. Making an early 
discovery of talents and a rapid proficiency in learning, he was 
■sent at the age of thirteen to Trinity College, Cambridge. On ' 
acquiring a considerable increase of fortune by the liberality of 
a Lady, in attending on whose only daughter his father had 
lost his life as he was crossing the Humber, young Marvell tra- 
velled through various parts of Europe, visited Rome, and re- 
sided for some time at Constantinople in the character of Secre- 
tary to the British Embassy. Soon after his return to England 
in 1653 he was appointed by Cromwell to be tutor to a Mr. 
Button, and in 1657 was associated, by the same powerful 
patron, in the office of Latin Secretary with Milton. In the 
parliament, which was summoned just before the event of the 
Restoration, he was elected as the representative of his native 
town, and so entirely did his public conduct obtain the appro- 
bation of his constituents that they continued him, with a liberal 
pension, in his seat to the hour of his death. Though it does 
not appear that he possessed the power of eloquence, or spoke 
frequently in the house, it is certain that his influence in Par- 
liament was considerable; and that he preserved the respect of 
the Court, even when he was the most determined in his hosti- 
lity to its measures. Charles indeed is said to have been 
much pleased with his conversation, and to have used every 
mean, though without effect, to gain him to the Court party, 



LIFE OF MILTON. 467 

the office of Latin Secretary; and that friend- 

or to relax the vigour of his opposition. Of his writings in 
prose and verse, which are numerous and respectable, one of 
the most considerable is, " The Rehearsal transprosed," a sati- 
rical piece, named after the Duke of Buckingham's famous 
Rehearsal, and directed against the noted Dr. Parker, whose 
flexibility eventually raised him to the Episcopal bench, and 
who, with ability and learning, but faithless in friendship, and 

destitute of principle, might be regarded as the H of his 

age. The poetry of Marvell is strong, manly, and full of thought, 
and his lines, which were prefixed to the second edition of the 
Paradise Lost, are as reputable to his judgment and poetic ta- 
lent, as they are to his friendship. He died in 16/3 in his 
58th year, when his constitution was yet entire and vigorous. 
From this circumstance, and from his obnoxiousness to the 
Court, as a member of the country party, his death has been 
imputed to the effect of poison. He was buried in the church 
of St. Giles in the Fields: and on his tomb, with the strictest 
adherence to truth, might have been inscribed," " Here lies a 
truly valuable man, the scholar, the wit, the fxrm and zealous 
friend, the disinterested, and incorruptible patriot." 

I am tempted to lengthen this long note by adding to it, from 
the Biographia Britannica,* an interesting narrative respecting 
the death of this estimable man's father. 

" Andrew Marvell, M. A. was vicar of Kingston -upon-Hull, 
in Yorkshire, in the 17th century. Some time before the be- 
ginning of the civil wars, he was unfortunately drowned in 
crossing the Humber. On that shore of the Humber opposite 
to Kingston, lived a Lady, whose virtue and good sense re- 
commended her to the esteem of Mr. Marvell, as his piety and 
understanding obliged her to take a particular notice of him. 
This lady had an only daughter, whose duty, ingenuity, de- 
votion, and general exemplary behaviour, had endeared her to 
all who knew her, and rendered her the darling of her mother ; 
so that, she could scarce bear to let her child be ever out of her 
sight. 

* Article, Marvell. 



468 LIFE OF MILTON. 

ship between him and Milton was ratified; 

Mr. Marvell, desirous to increase the amity between the two 
families, asked her to let her beloved daughter come over to 
Kingston, to stand god-mother to one of his children, which 
she consented to. The young lady came over to Kingston, and 
the ceremony was performed. The next day, when she came 
down to the water side in order to return home, she found the 
wind very high and the water so rough as to render the pas- 
sage dangerous, so that the waterman earnestly dissuaded her 
from all thoughts of crossing: but she, who from her birth had 
never wilfully given her mother a moment's uneasiness, and 
who knew how miserable she would be until she saw her 
again, insisted on going, notwithstanding all that could be 
urged by the waterman or Mr. Marvell, who earnestly intreated 
her to return to his house and to wait for better weather. 

Mr. Marvell, finding her resolutely bent to venture her life 
rather than run the risque of disobliging a fond parent, thought 
himself obliged, in honour and conscience, to share the danger 
with her; and accordingly having persuaded some waterman 
to attempt the passage, they both got into the boat. Just as 
they put off, Mr. Marvell threw his gold headed cane on shore 
to some friends who attended at the water-side, telling them, 
that, as he could not suffer the young lady to go alone and as 
he apprehended the consequence might be fatal, if he perished, 
he desired them to give that cane to his son, and bid him re- 
member his father. Thus he, armed with innocence, and his 
fair charge, with filial duty and affection, set forward to meet 
their inevitable fate: the boat was overset, and they were lost. 

" The lady, whose excessive fondness had plunged her 
daughter and friend into this terrible condition, went the same 
afternoon into her garden, and seated herself in an arbour, from 
whence she could view the water j and while with no small 
anxiety she beheld the tempestuous state it was in, she saw (or 
rather thought she saw) a most lovely boy with flaxen hair 
come into the garden; who, making up directly to her, said, 
"Madam, your daughter is safe now." The Lady, greatly 
surprised, said, <( My pretty dear, how didst thou know any 
thing of my daughter?" — Then bidding him stay, she arose 



LIFE OF WILTON. 469 

which, beginning at a somewhat earlier pe- 
riod, was terminated only with their lives. 

In 1658, Milton published, with the title 
of, " The Cabinet Council" a manuscript of 
Sir Walter Ralegh's, consisting of aphorisms 
on the art of government: but his mind was 
now to be called from these amusements of 
the press to attentions of a very afflicting and 
embarrassing nature. 

In the September of this year, amid 
the wretchedness of apprehension and re- 
morse, the Protector finished his splendid 
but criminal career; supplying one awful 
and monitory example more, to the many 
which had already been exhibited to the 
world, (if human passion could be brought 
to attend to the lesson of example,) of the 
impotence of ambition with her richest re- 
wards to compensate the forfeiture of inte- 
grity. The confusions, which ensued upon 

and went into the house for a pretty piece of new money to re- 
ward him for his care : but returning into the garden, the child 
was gone, and no tidings of him could be heard. This gave her 
some suspicion of her misfortune; which was soon after con- 
firmed, with the additional aggravation that her friend was in- 
volved in the same mischief, and of course his family great suf- 
ferers j she having lost her pleasure, they their support : and 
thinking herself bound by every tie to make all the reparation 
in her power, she sent for the son of her late friend, the cele- 
brated Andrew Marvell, charged herself with the expence of 
his future education, and at her death left him her fortune." 



470 LIFE OF MILTON. 

his death, induced the people to regret the 
loss even of an usurper, whose vigorous au- 
thority had suspended those dissensions of 
which they were now the prey, and had con- 
trolled the licentiousness of the army by whose 
caprices they were now insulted and op- 
pressed. After a reign of less than nine months, 
Richard Cromwell descended, in the conscious 
security of innocence/ and with a magnani- 
mity which could disdain greatness when as- 
sociated with guilt, from his high and giddy 
eminence to the safe level of a private sta- 
tion; and the council of officers, headed by 
Desborough and Fleetwood who had imme- 
diately contributed to Richard's abdication, 
summoned the relics of the Long Parliament 
to re-assume the guidance of the Common- 
wealth. A part of this renowned assembly, 
which still legally existed, convened on this in- 
vitation; and, soon displaying its accustomed 
energy and talent, became in a short time 
the object of just alarm to its military tyrants, 
and again suffered a forcible interruption of 

r Richard Cromwell might have supported himself on his 
Protectoral throne if he would have consented to the assassi- 
nation of Desborough and Fleetwood ; or would have accepted 
in time the military assistance offered to him by his brother 
Henry, the amiable and popular governor of Ireland. The 
letters of Henry Cromwell, on this occasion, discover a clear 
head and an excellent heart. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 4?1 

its sittings. On this last excess of the army, 
under the influence of men, destitute alike of 
ability and of public feeling and equally in- 
capable of providing for their own interests or 
for those of the community, the nation expe- 
rienced a species of anarchy, and fell into the 
extreme of degradation under a military des- 
potism. The Presbyterians, discontented since 
the triumph of the Independents, but crushed 
beneath the weighty sceptre of Oliver and 
acquiescing in the succession of his son, now 
openly avowed their disaffection to the rul- 
ing powers and united themselves heartily 
with the Royalists. 

This extraordinary confusion and conflict 
of parties opened a field to Monk, who had 
been placed by Cromwell at the head of the 
forces in Scotland and was now the gover- 
nor of that kingdom, for the display of his 
inconstancy, his cunning, and his perfidy. 
Peculiarly favoured by his situation, and so- 
licited by the Presbyterians, the People, and 
the Parliament for aid against an insolent 
soldiery, who, like the blind giant of classical 
fable, possessed brutal power without the 
vision requisite to divert it from self-destroy- 
ing exertion, this wavering and narrow- 
minded man, with mean talents but with 
deep dissimulation, was enabled to betray 



4?2 LIFE OF MILTON. 

all who confided in him, to abandon his old 
associates to the butchery of legal vengeance, 
and with a fearful accumulation of perjury 
on his head to surrender the nation, without 
a single stipulation in its favour, to the do- 
minion of a master in whom voluptuousness 
and cruelty were confounded in a disgusting 
embrace. By every intelligent and reflecting 
man the restoration of the monarchy of Eng- 
land must be hailed asamost auspicious event: 
but it may be questioned whether the uncon- 
ditional restoration of it, and this alone was 
properly the act of Monk, can be regarded as 
a benefit either to the prince or to the peo- 
ple ; — to the former, whom it allured to those 
excesses which induced the final expulsion 
of his family from the throne; or to the lat- 
ter, whom it immediately exposed to the 
evils of an injurious reign, and eventually 
subjected to the necessity of asserting, with 
the blood of two domestic wars, their right 
to civil and religious liberty. 

While these strange transactions were 
passing in the space between the Protector's 
death and the return of Charles, the mind of 
Milton must necessarily have been agitated 
with very severe inquietudes. Under the 
usurpation of Cromwell he had seen the 
structure of liberty, which his ardent imagi- 



LIFE OF MILTON. 4/3 

nation had erected, dissolve like a vision into 
air, and leave not a vestige to intimate the 
place where the fanciful edifice had stood. 
In this bad case however there were circum- 
stances to appease and console him. At home, 
religious freedom had been admitted in its 
most ample expansion; and, with the name 
of a commonwealth, many of the privileges 
of free men had been respected and per- 
mitted to remain. The personal character 
of the usurper had also in some measure 
covered the deformity of the usurpation. 
Magnificent in public, as the representative 
of a great nation, in private he was simple 
and plain. Impatient of those questions 
which pressed upon his own title, he ad- 
mitted all others to unlimited discussion; and 
while the most equal justice was distributed 
under his auspices through all the ranks of 
the community, his vigorous arm controlled 
Europe and seated Britain as her queen 
upon the throne. His generous policy that 
protected the reformed churches against their 
catholic oppressors, (one exertion of which, 
for the Protestants of Piedmont, has already 
been mentioned,) was alone sufficient to soften 
the hostility, if it could not entirely engage 
the affection of Milton. 

On the death of Oliver the usurper was 



474 LIFE OF MILTON. 

no more, but the usurpation survived; and 
for the vigour and liberality which he had 
been accustomed to respect, Milton saw no- 
thing but the weakness and the selfishness 
of faction, trampling upon tlie rights and the 
patience of the nation, and precipitating it- 
self, with the cause which it professed to 
support, into irretrievable ruin. 

He was not however wanting to the com- 
munity at this crisis of confusion and alarm. 
Apprehensive of returning intolerance from 
the increasing influence of the Presbj^terians, 
he published two treatises, one called, " A 
Treatise of the Civil Power in Ecclesiastical 
Causes;" and the other, " Considerations 
touching the likeliest means to remove Hire- 
lings out of the Church/' In the first of 
these works, which he addressed to the Par- 
liament convened by Richard Cromwell, he 
asserts the entire liberty of conscience, and 
with arguments drawn from the sacred writ- 
ings he demonstrates that in matters merely of 
religion the interference of the magistrate is 
unlawful: in the second, which he inscribed 
to the Long Parliament on its revival by the 
army, he allows the propriety of a mainte- 
nance for the christian minister, but, ar- 
guing against the divine right as well as the 
political expediency of tithes, he is of opi- 



LIFE OF MILTON. 475 

nion that the pastor ought to be supported 
by the contributions of his own immediate 
flock. To the politician, who contemplates 
in this country the advantages of a church 
establishment and sees it in union with the 
most perfect toleration, or to the philoso- 
pher, who discovers in the weakness of hu- 
man nature the necessity of present mo- 
tives to awaken exertion and to stimulate 
attention, the plan recommended by our aur 
thor would appear to be visionary or perni- 
cious; and we should not hesitate to condemn 
it, if its practicability and its inoffensive conse- 
quence were not incontrovertibly established 
by the testimony of America. From Hud- 
son's Bay, with the small interruption of Ca- 
nada, to the Mississippi, this immense con- 
tinent beholds the religion of Jesus, uncon- 
nected with the patronage of government, 
subsisting in independent yet friendly com- 
munities, breathing that universal charity 
which constitutes its vital spirit, and offering, 
with its distinct yet blending tones, one grand 
combination of harmony to the ear of its 
Heavenly Father. 

Milton, as a political writer, had now 
been so long withdrawn from the public ob- 
servation, and had so long been reposing 
under the shade of the Protectoral govern- 



476 



LIFE OF MILTON, 



ment, that his republican admirers began to 
suspect him of alienation from their cause, 
and of hesitation in the race on which he had 
entered with so much spirit and effect. Their 
opinion of his consistency was restored how- 
ever by the publications of which we have 
been speaking; and they now acknowledged 
him to be still the Milton of former times. In 
a letter, addressed to him on the subject of 
the first of these treatises by a Mr. Wall of 
Causham, dated May 29, 1659, that gentle- 
man says, " I confess I have even in my pri- 
vacy in the country oft had thoughts of you, 
and that with much respect for your friend- 
ship to truth in your early years and in bad 
times. But I was uncertain whether your 
relation to the Court, (though I think that a 
commonwealth was more friendly to you 
than a court,) had not clouded your former 
light: but your last book resolved that 
doubt." 3 

As the disorders and the disgraces of the 
year increased, while the earnest protestations 
of Monk and the existence of a Parliament, 
in which the royalists formed an inconsider- 



3 Transcribed from the original by Mr. Owen of Rochdale 
in Lancashire. Birch's Life of Milton, p. xliL The whole 
letter is inserted in P. W. ii. 388, and the reader will find it to be 
deserving of his notice. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 477 

able party, still supported the hopes of the 
republicans against the visible and strong 
current of the national opinion in favour of 
monarchy, the solicitous apprehension of 
Milton for the general result, and his indig- 
nation at the* outrages of the army are disco- 
vered in a letter to a friend, dated October 
the 20th, 1659; which with another paper, 
addressed, as it is believed, to Monk and en- 
titled " The present Means and brief Deli- 
neation of a free Commonwealth/' was first 
published by Toland, and is well worthy of 
the reader's attention. 

After an interval of a few months, he in- 
scribed to Monk, who now seemed to com- 
mand the issue of things, " The ready and 
easy way to establish a free Commonwealth ;" 
a piece intended rather to expose the evils 
necessarily consequent to the nation's relapse 
into its old vassalage under kings, and to de- 
monstrate the preference of a republican to 
a monarchical government, than to propose 
any just model of a popular constitution. In 
this work, as well as in his " Brief Delinea- 
tion/' he shows himself to be fearful of an 
unqualified appeal to the people; and deems 
them incapable of determining with wisdom 
for their own interests. " Another way," as 
Iiq says, " will be to qualify and refine elec- 



47S LIFE OF MILTON. 

tions;' not committing all to the noise and 
shouting of a rude multitude; but permitting 
only those of them who are rightly qualified 
to nominate as many as they will, and out 
of that number others of better breeding to 
choose a less number more judiciously, till, 
after a third or fourth sifting and refining of 
exactest choice, they only be left chosen, who 
are the due number and seem by most voices 
the worthiest." With the strong preposses- 
sion of a party-zealot, he deserts his general 
principle for the attainment of his particular 
object; and thinks that his own opinions 
ought to be enforced in opposition to those 
of the majority of the nation. Aware also 
that a frequent change of the governing body 
might be attended with inconvenience and 
possible danger, he decides against frequent 
parliaments, and in favour of a permanent 
Council. Into such inconsistencies was he 
betrayed by his animosity to monarchy, and 
his bigotted attachment to whatever carried 
the name of a republic. With all its defects 
however, and raised indisputably on a false 
foundation, this treatise exhibits many strik- 
ing truths and places them in strong atti- 
tudes. Its description of the extravagancy 

1 P. W. iii. 416. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 479 

and corruption of a court has been cited by 
Toland; and I shall transcribe some of its 
passages, which must have been read with 
interest by the nation when suffering the dis- 
graceful reign of Charles, and when subse- 
quently indebted to a generous foreigner 
and to a small part of its own aristocracy 
for a restitution of its rights. But the people 
had now been wronged beyond their patience, 
and the persuasion of an angel's tongue would 
have failed in the attempt to bring their pas- 
sions into any subordination to prudence. 

" But admit, that monarchy of itself may 
be convenient to some nations; yet to us, who 
have thrown it out and received it back 
again, it cannot but prove pernicious. For 
kings to come, never forgetting their former 
ejection, will be sure to fortify and arm them- 
selves sufficiently for the future against all 
such attempts hereafter from the people; 
who shall be then so narrowly watched and 
kept so low, that though they would never 
so fain, and at the same rate of their blood 
and treasure, they never shall be able to re- 
gain what they now have purchased and may 
enjoy, or to free themselves from any yoke 
imposed upon them: nor will they dare to 
go about it; utterly disheartened for the fu- 
ture, if these their highest attempts prove 



480 LITE OF MILTON. 

unsuccessful; which will be the triumph of 
all tyrants hereafter over any people that 
shall resist oppression; and their song will 
then be, to others, how sped the rebellious 
English? to our posterity, how sped the re- 
bels your fathers?" 

" They had their longing, but with this 
testimony of God's wrath; " Ye shall cry 
out in that day because of your King whom 
ye shall have chosen, and the Lord will not 
hear you in that day." Us if he shall not 
hear now, how much less will he hear when 
we cry hereafter, who once delivered by him 
from a king, and not without wonderous acts 
of Providence, insensible and unworthy of 
those high mercies, are returning precipi- 
tancy, if he withhold us not, back to the 
captivity from whence he freed us? Yet nei- 
ther shall we obtain or buy at an easy rate 
this new gilded yoke which thus transports 
us: a new royal revenue must be found, 
a new episcopal; for those are individual: 
both which being wholly dissipated, or bought 
by private persons, or assigned for service 
done, and especially to the army, cannot be 
recovered without general detriment and con- 
fusion to men's estates, or a heavy imposi- 
tion on all men's purses ; benefit to none but 



LIFE OF MILTON. 481 

to the worst and ignoblest sort of men, whose 
hope is to be either the ministers of court 
riot and excess, or the gainers by it : but not 
to speak more of losses and extraordinary 
levies on our estates, what will then be the 
revenges and offences remembered and re- 
turned not only by the chief person, but by 
all his adherents; accounts and reparations 
that will be required, suits, indictments, in- 
quiries, discoveries, complaints, informations, 
who knows against whom or how many, 
though perhaps neuters, if not to utmost in- 
fliction, yet to imprisonment, fines, banish- 
ment, or molestation? if not these, yet dis- 
favour, discountenance, disregard, and con- 
tempt on all but the known royalist, or whom 
he favours, will be plenteous. Nor let the 
new royalized presbyterians persuade them- 
selves, that their old doings, though now re- 
canted, will be forgotten; whatever condi- 
tions be contrived, or trusted on." 

" This liberty of conscience, which above 
all other things ought to be to all men dearest 
and most precious, no government more in- 
clinable not to favour only, but to protect, 
than a free commonwealth; as being most 
magnanimous, most fearless and confident of 
its own fair proceedings. Whereas kingship, 

2 I 



482 LIFE OF MILTON". 

though looking big, yet indeed most pusilla- 
nimous, full of fears, full of jealousies, start- 
led at every umbrage, as it hath been ob- 
served of old to have ever suspected most 
and mistrusted them who were in most esteem 
for virtue and generosity of mind, so it is 
now known to have most in doubt and sus- 
picion them who are most reputed to be re- 
ligious. Queen Elizabeth, though herself 
accounted so good a protestant, so mode- 
rate, so confident of her subjects love, would 
never give way so much as to presbyterian 
reformation in this land, though once and 
again besought, as Camden relates; but im- 
prisoned and persecuted the very proposers 
thereof; alled^ino; it as her mind and maxim 
unalterable, that such reformation would di- 
minish regal authority. What liberty of con- 
science can we then expect of others, far 
worse principled from the cradle, trained up 
and governed by Popish and Spanish coun- 
sels, and on such depending hitherto for 
subsistence?" 

" I have no more to say at present : few 
words will save us, well considered; few and 
easy things, now seasonably done. But if 
the people be so affected, as to prostitute 
religion and liberty to the vain and ground- 



LIFE OF MILTON. 483 

less apprehension that nothing bat kingship 
can restore trade, not remembering the fre- 
quent plagues and pestilences that then 
wasted this city, such as through God's mercy 
we never have felt since; and that trade flou- 
rishes no where more than in the free com- 
monwealths of Italy, Germany, and the Low 
Countries, before their eyes at this day: yet 
if trade be grown so craving and importu- 
nate through the profuse living of tradesmen, 
that nothing can support it but the luxu- 
rious expences of a nation upon trifles or 
superfluities: so as if the people generally 
should betake themselves to frug;alitv, it 
might prove a dangerous matter, lest trades- 
men should mutiny for want of trading; and 
that therefore we must forego and set to sale 
religion, liberty, honour, safety, all concern- 
ments divine or human, to keep up trading: 
if, lastty, after all this light among us, the 
same reason shall pass for current, to put our 
necks again under kingship, as was made use 
of by the Jews to return back to Egypt, and 
to the worship of their idol queen, because 
they falsely imagined that they then lived 
in more plenty and prosperity; our condition 
is not sound but rotten, both in religion and 
all civil prudence; and will bring us soon, 
the way we are marching, to those calami- 



484 LIFE Or MILTON. 

ties which attend always and unavoidably 
on luxury, all national judgments under fo- 
reign and domestic slavery: so far we shall 
be from mending our condition by monarch- 
ising our government, whatever new conceit 
now possesses us. However, with all hazard 
I have ventured what I thought my duty to 
speak in season, and to forewarn my country 
in time; wherein I doubt not but there be 
many wise men in all places and degrees, 
but am sorry the effects of wisdom are so 
little seen among us. Many circumstances 
and particulars I could have added in those 
things whereof I have spoken : but a few 
main matters, now put speedily in execution, 
will suffice to recover us and set all right: 
and there will want at no time who are good 
at circumstances; but men, who set their 
minds on main matters and sufficiently urge 
them in these most difficult times, I find not 
many. What I have spoken, is the language 
of that which is not called amiss " The good 
old Cause:" if it seem strange to any, it will 
not seem more strange, I hope, than convinc- 
ing to backsliders. Thus much I should per- 
haps have said, though I were sure I should 
have spoken only to trees and stones; and 
had none to cry to but, with the prophet, 
" O earth, earth, earth F? to tell the very 



LIFE OF MILTON. 485 

soil itself, what her perverse inhabitants are 
deaf to. Nay, though what I have spoke 
should happen (which thou suffer not, who 
didst create mankind free ! nor thou next, 
who didst redeem us from being servants of 
men!) to be the last words of our expiring 
liberty/' u 

This production was made the subject of 
a sportive and a serious reply: the former, 
a ludicrous pamphlet affecting to issue from 
Harrington's republican club, was called 
" The Censure of the Rota upon Mr. Mil- 
ton's Book, entitled " The ready and easy 
Way to establish a free Commonwealth;" 
and the latter was styled, " The Dignity of 
Kingship asserted in Answer to Mr. Milton's 
ready and easy Way, &c." 

These attacks were not calculated to occa- 
sion much disturbance to the republican au- 
thor: but he could not feel equally easy on the 
near approach of that thunder-cloud, which 
was just ready to burst upon him and his party. 
His spirit however did not desert him; and, 
while there remained a possibility of uphold- 
ing his falling cause, he was resolute and ac- 
tive in its support. Bold in the anticipation of 

* P. YV.iii, 421,422, 428. 



486 LIFE OF MILTON. 

their triumph, the Royalists had already seised 
upon the press and the pulpit for the diffusion 
of their tenets and their resentments; and 
Dr. Matthew Griffith, one of the late kings 
chaplains, desirous of making a professional 
display of his loyalty at a crisis when it 
might be especially beneficial to him, pub- 
lished a sermon, which he had preached at 
Mercer's Hall, on (Proverbs xxiv. 21.) " My 
Son, fear the Lord and the King, and meddle 
not with them that are given to change/* 
On this provocation Milton instantly kindled; 
and, in a short but forcible commentary on 
the Doctor's sermon, x renewed his strong 
avowal of republicanism, at a time when this 
heresy in British politics was on the point of 
being finally proscribed. To these " brief 
notes," as Milton calls his remarks on Grif- 



x Milton's seventy, on this intrusion of the pulpit into the 
province of politics, reminds us of the asperity with which Mr. 
Burke reprehended a similar invasion by a modern divine. 
Dr. Price differed as essentially in his political principles from 
the chaplain of Charles, as Milton did from the Marquis of 
Rockingham's secretary: yet the two doctors experienced the 
same treatment, and the two statesmen concurred in the same 
sentiments of reprobation. The politics of the pulpit may, at 
all times, perhaps be liable to just censure; but they are never 
arraigned when they are not in opposition to our own. If 
they are convicted of the guilt of a complexion different from 
our's, they are certain of condemnation, and must not hope to 
be allowed the benefit of clergy. 



LIFE OF MILTOX. 48? 

fith's sermon, I/Estrange wrote a sharp reply, 
of which I know nothing more than its title 
of " No blind Guides:" and with this skir- 
mish terminated the political controversies 
of the author of Paradise Lost. 

Charles was now advancing, with the ac- 
clamations of the people, to sit upon the 
throne of his ancestors; and the Latin Secre- 
tary had acted too conspicuous a part in op- 
position to him and to his family not to be 
endangered by the event. By his friends 
therefore, who were solicitous for his safety, 
Milton was hurried from his house in Petty- 
France, where during some years he had been 
visited with respect by the great, the opulent, 
and the learned, and was secreted under the 
roof of a friend in St. Bartholomew's Close, 
near to West Smithfield/ Here his conceal- 



y Mr. Warton, who occasionally collects carious anecdotes, 
relates, on the authority of Mr. Tyers, (whose authority also ought 
to have been stated,) that Milton's friends, for the purpose of 
suspending the pursuit of his enemies, made a mock funeral for 
him on the present interesting occasion j and that the trick, 
when it was afterwards discovered, became an object of the 
king's mirth. See Warton's Edit, of Milton's Juvenile Poems, 
p. 358. In Cunningham's History of Great Britain, the same 
fact is mentioned, and it is said that " the king applauded his 
policy in escaping the punishment of death by a seasonable 
show of dying." When he could not murder, this facetious 
monarch could still laugh. 



488 LIFE OF MILTON. 

ment was perfect; till the passing of the act 
of oblivion, in the exceptions of which he was 
not comprehended, ascertained his safety and 
re-instated him in society. 

To whom he was indebted on this emer- 
gency for his preservation, has frequently 
been inquired, and has variously been ex- 
plained. The forgetfulness or the clemency 
of Charles must necessarily be thrown out of 
the question ; for of the former his benefac- 
tors only were the objects, and of the latter, 
those alone whom his prudence or his want 
of power prohibited him to punish. To what 
cause, then, are we to ascribe the impunity 
of Milton? In some points of view, his of- 
fence might be regarded as greater even than 
that of the immediate regicides ; for they had 
only murdered the king, while he had insulted 
the office; their act was confined in its conse- 
quences to a small compass of time and of 
place, while his extended to unborn genera- 
tions and touched the extremities of Europe. 
His guilt therefore, as we may be certain, 

This story reminds us of the following lines of the Epi- 
grammatist : but the suicide of Fannius was real, while that of 
Milton was happily fictitious. 

Hostem cum fugeret, se Fannius ipse peremit. 
Hie, rogo, non furor est ne moriare mori ? 

Mart. ii. 80. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 489 

could not be pardoned without powerful 
intercession. We may conclude that his 
friend, Andrew Marvell, the member for 
Hull, made what interest for him he could 
in the House ; and we are told that Sir Tho- 
mas Clarges united his exertions with those 
of Secretary Morrice for the preservation of 
this valuable life. But Milton seems to have 
been saved principally by the earnest and 
grateful interposition of Sir William D'Ave- 
nant. When D'Avenant, who had been cap- 
tured by the fleet of the Commonwealth on 
his passage from France to America, had been 
ordered by the Parliament, in 1651, to his trial 
before the High Court of Justice, the media- 
tion of Milton had essentially contributed to 
snatch him from his danger; and, urged by 
that generous benevolence which shone con- 
spicuously in his character, he was now eager 
to requite with a gift of equal value the life 
which he had received. For the existence 
of D'Avenant's obligation to Milton we have 
the testimony of Wood; 2 and for the subse- 
quent part of a story, so interesting in itself 
and so honourable to human nature, the evi- 
dence is distinctly and directly to be traced 
in its ascent from Richardson to Pope, and 

2 Athenae Oxon. ii. 412. 



490 LIFE OF MILTON. 

from Pope to Betterton, the immediate client 
and intimate of D'Avenant. 

On the passing of the Act of Oblivion, 3 in 
the full grace of which he found himself in- 
cluded^ Milton left the retirement, where he 
had continued for nearly four months; and in 
which he had heard himself made by a vote of 
the Commons the object of a public prosecu- 

a On the 29th of August. 

h John Goodwin, a divine and a writer of no celebrity, who 
had justified, without ability or effect, the murder of the king, 
was not beneath the condescension of this act of the legislature. 
He was incapacitated by it from holding any public office: and 
he is said to have owed his life only to the circumstance of his 
Arminian principles, which had conciliated the favour of some 
of the ieading clergy of the church of England. His obnoxious 
work, which was called " The Obstructors of Justice," had the 
honour of burning with Milton's superior publications. 

Verum idem ex animo, (says Isaac Vossius speaking of Sal- 
masius, in a letter to N. Heinsius, from Stockholm, dated on the 
5th of April, 1651) gaudet librum Miltoni Lutetiae publice a car- 
nifice esse combustum. Non opus est ut meum de hoc scripto 
interponam judicium : interim hoc scio, fatum esse bonorum fere" 
librorum, ut hoc modo vel pereant vel periclitentur. Homines ple- 
rumque propter scelera et pravitatem manus camincum subeunt, 
libri vero virtutis et prasstantias ergo. Soli fatuorum labores tales 
non metuunt casus, Sed sane frustra sunt, qui se hoc modo ex- 
stirpare posse existimant Miltoni et aliorum scripta, cum potius 
flammis istis mirum quantum clarescant et illustrentur. [Burm. 
Syll. iii. 621.] These are the remarks of a man who was sen- 
sible not only of the merit of Milton's work, but of the impo_ 
tenee of that vengeance, which the enemies of its great author 
attempted by this measure to inflict on it. By what caprice or 
mistake could Isaac Vossius be promoted in our church by the 
ssame hands which raised the dirty Du Moulin to one of its 
dignities * 



LIFE OF MILTON. 491 

tion, and his two great political works, the 
" Iconoelastes" and the " Defence of the 
People of England,"' condemned to be burnt 
by the hands of the hangman. By this last 
species of insult, he was probably no more 
affected on the present occasion than he had 
formerly been by its infliction on one of the 
same publications at Toulouse and at Paris: 
and he probably also only smiled when, for the 
purpose of increasing his unpopularity and, 
of course, his danger at this delicate crisis of his 
fortune, the malignity of his enemies published 
the abuse and calumnies which had been 
vented against him by the dying Salmasius. 
But those scenes of sanguinary execution, 

c I must here, with some shame and much regret, remark 
a circumstance which favourably distinguished the usurping go- 
vernment from the regular monarchy. During the usurpation 
men had been convicted of high treason, (for the Courts had 
properly determined that attempts against the actual represen- 
tative of the state, (by whatever title he was called,) were high 
treason, — but simple death was the utmost infliction j and the axe 
or the halter put the speediest period to the existence of the cri- 
minal. But on the restoration of the monarchy, the old barbarity 
of the law was admitted in its full horror. Men were quartered 
alive : the bowels were torn from the yet breathing sufferer, and 
the public feeling was either disgusted or hardened by the spec- 
tacle of torture and ferocious punishment. The infliction of this 
abominable sentence in its full rigour is now, in fact, prohibited 
by the general sense of the community: but much, of course, 
must still be left to the discretion of the sheriff and the execu- 
tioner. The correspondent punishment for females, that I mean 
of burning alive, has very properly been abolished by an act of 



492 LIFE OF MILTON". 

which he was soon destined to witness, must 
have carried the wound immediately to his 
heart. 

That the clemency of Charles should be 
the theme of lavish panegyric with contem- 
porary loyalty ought not possibly to excite our 
surprise: but, with reference to him, the time 
has long since elapsed in which praise, unsup- 
ported by truth, can be admitted on the plea 
of passion. If we reflect that Charles was 
not now reclaiming his royal rights as a con- 

our Legislature in the 30th year of the present reign : and it is to 
be hoped that this ferocious punishment of quartering alive, will 
not be suffered much longer to pollute the pages of our criminal 
code. No man can deplore with more genuine sensibility than 
myself the sanguinary excesses and the opprobrious result of 
the French revolution : but when I reflect that it has banished 
the rack and the wheel, the red-hot pincers and the dismem- 
bering horse, 1 cannot forbear from thinking that it has made a 
considerable compensation to human nature for any violences 
which, in the paroxysm of its phrenzy, it may have offered 
to her. 

Since this note was in print, it has been suggested to me 
that the use of torture, for extorting confession, has been revived 
in France. With the dreadful secrets of the dungeons of resus- 
citated despotism I pretend not to be acquainted j but no public 
exhibition or avowal of torture has yet shocked the community of 
France. The re-establishment however of this cruel and atro- 
cious practice cannot be regarded as improbable in the new em- 
pire of the French -, and, with the renovation of the slave trade 
and of negro slavery in the West Indies, it will form an act of 
legislation well worthy, in its double reference to humanity and 
to political wisdom, of the new imperial government of the august 
Buonapartes. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 493 

queror; that the nation was not trembling at 
his feet, and, like a city taken by storm, in 
a state to be thankful for every deed of 
brutal violence which was not committed, 
but that in truth he was an impotent exile, 
receiving gratuitously a crown from the very 
hands w T hich had torn it from his family, — 
from a Parliament, a great majority of whose 
members had been active in the overthrow 
of the monarchy, and from an army, which 
had immediately conducted his father to the 
scaffold, — we may reasonably inquire by what 
acts could he have discovered a stronger pro- 
pensity to cruelty than he did. In the first 
moments of power, conferred on him by his 
recent popularity, when his heart ought to 
have been softened by the unexpected influx 
of prosperous fortune, he eluded the propo- 
sition, which was made to him at Breda, for 
a general amnesty, and evidently discovered 
that his spirit brooded on revenge. When he 
was seated on his throne, he accepted those 
victims which the perfidious ness of party, 
in expiation of its own offences, was so base 
as to offer to him; and he glutted the nation, 
as far as he durst, with an effusion of blood, 
not more guilty than that of thousands per- 
haps who were present to behold it; for they 
who from their office were more personally 



494 LIFE OF MILTON. 

engaged in the trial and the execution of the 
king, were unquestionably not more criminal 
than were all shose who had voted for these 
violences in Parliament; or in the army had 
first planned, and then imperiously carried 
them into effect. More however than they 
who were regarded as the actual regicides were 
exempted from the benefit of the amnesty. 
Neither Vane, nor Peters, nor Lambert was 
immediately implicated in the murder of the 
king ; yet the two former of these were 
slaughtered, (and Vane, in violation of the 
royal promise to the Parliament for his par- 
don,) while the last, the most guilty of the 
three, was indeed permitted to live, but to 
live only in a state of miserable exile. 

But not limited to the sufferings of the 
living, the vengeance of Charles extended 
itself to mean and atrocious outrages on the 
dead. It broke the hallowed repose of the 
tomb, and exhibited that last infirmity of 
our mortal nature, the corruption through 
which it is doomed to pass into its kindred 
earth, to the derision and the disgust of im- 
potent malignity. When we behold the bo- 
dies of the illustrious usurper d ' and of the 

d It is well known that many doubts have existed respect- 
ing the place in which Oliver Cromwell was interred ; and it hag 
been advanced, on authority which cannot easily be controverted, 



LIFE OF MILTON. 49^ 

formidable Ireton torn from their graves, 

that his corpse was removed, on the day succeeding that of 
his death, and buried in the field of Naseby. The account 
goes further and affirms that, suspicious of the indignities which 
would probably in a change of things be offered to the Usurp- 
er's body, his friends substituted for it in the coffin that of 
Charles; and that it was this corpse which was afterwards ex- 
posed on the gallows at Tyburn. To entertain my readers I 
will present them with a curious paper on this subject, pre- 
served in Lord Somers's Collection. I must premise however 
that, as eleven years had nearly elapsed since the death of 
Charles, it is difficult to conceive how any distinction of coun- 
tenance, or of seam about the neck could at this period be traced: 
unless indeed the process of dissolution had been suspended by 
the arts of embalming, the corpse, with the exception of the 
bones, must now have been resolved into its original elements. 
But the second fact, stated in the following document, is attested 
by less authentic evidence than the first ; and one may be rejected 
while the other is received. 

u A counter-interment of the aforesaid arch. tray tor,* as averred, 
and ready to be deposed (if occasion required) by Mr. 
— Barkstead, who daily frequents Richard's coffee-house, 
within Temple-Bar, being son to Barkstead, the regicide, 
that was executed as such soon after the Restoration, the son 
being at the time of the said arch-traytor's death about the 
age of fifteen years. 

" That the said regicide Barkstead, being lieutenant of the 
Tower of London, and a great confident of the usurper, did 
among other such confidents, in the time of the usurper's sick- 
ness, desire to know where he would be buried: to which he 
answered, where he had obtained the greatest victory and glory, 
and as nigh the spot as could be guessed where the heat of the 
action was, viz. in the field at Naseby, county of Northampton; 
which accordingly was thus performed: at midnight (soon after 
his death) being first embalmed, and wrapped in a leaden coffin, 
he was in a hearse conveyed to the same field, the said Mr. 

♦Oliver Cromwell. 



496 LIFE OF MILTON. 

and made the subject of idle punishment, 

Barkstead by order of his father attending close to the hearse, 
and being come to the field, there found about the midst of it 
a grave, dug about nine feet deep, with the green sod carefully- 
laid on one side and the mould on the other; in which the 
coffin being soon put, the grave was instantly filled up, and the 
green sod laid exactly flat upon it, care being taken that the 
surplus mould was clean taken away. 

Soon after, like care was taken that the said field was en- 
tirely ploughed up, and sown three or four years successively 
with wheat. 

Several other material circumstances, relating to the said in- 
terment, the said Mr. Barkstead relates (too long to be here in- 
serted) and, particularly, after the Restoration, his conference, 
with the late (witty) duke of Buckingham, &c. 

Talking over this account of Barkstead's, with the Rev. Mr. 
Sm— , of Q. ■, whose father had long resided in Florence as 
a merchant, and afterwards as minister from King Charles the 
second, and had been well acquainted with the fugitives after 
the Restoration, he assured me, he had often heard the said ac- 
count by other hands; those miscreants always boasting that 
they had wreaked their revenge against the father, as far as 
human foresight could carry it, by beheading him whilst living, 
and making his best friends the executioners of the utmost ig- 
nominies upon him when dead. Asking him the particular 
meaning of the last sentence, he said, that Oliver and his 
friends, apprehending the restoration of the Stuart family, and 
that all imaginable disgrace on that turn would be put upon 
his body as well as memory, he contrived his own burial, as 
averred by Barkstead, having all the theatrical honours of a 
pompous funeral paid to an empty coffin, into which after- 
wards was removed the corpse of the martyr, (which, by Lord 
Clarendon's own account, had never truly, or certainly been 
interred; and, after the Restoration, when most diligently sought 
after by the Earls of Southampton and Lindsey, at the com- 
mand of King Charles the second, in order to a solemn removal, 
could no where in the church where he was said to have been 
buried be found,) that, if any sentence should be pronounced, 



LIFE OF MILTON. 497 

we are less disposed to wonder than to smile 
at the cowardly and pitiful insult: but when 
we see subjected to similar indignities the 
mouldering remains of the noble-minded 



as upon his body, it might effectually fall upon that of the King. 
That, on that order of the Commons, in King Charles the se- 
cond's time, the tomb was broken down, and the body, taken 
out of a coffin so inscribed as mentioned in the Serjeant's report, 
was from thence conveyed to Tyburn, and, to the utmost joy 
and triumph of that crew of miscreants, hung publickly on the 
gallows amidst an infinite crowd of spectators, almost infected 
with the noisomeness of the stench. The secret being only 
amongst that abandoned few, there was no doubt in the rest of 
the people, but the bodies, so exposed, were the bodies they 
were said to be ; had not some, whose curiosity had brought 
them nearer to the tree, observed with horror the remains of 
a countenance they little had expected there; and that, on 
tying the cord, there was a strong seam about the neck, by 
which the head ha"& been, as supposed, immediately after the 
decollation, fastened again to the body. This being whispered 
about, and the numbers that came to the dismal sight hourly 
increasing, notice was immediately given of the suspicion to 
the attending officer, who dispatched a messenger to court to 
acquaint them with the rumour, and the ill consequences the 
spreading or examining into it further might have. On which 
the bodies were immediately ordered down to be buried again 
to prevent any infection. Certain is it, they were not burnt, 
as in prudence, for that pretended reason, might have been ex- 
pected j as well as in justice, to have shewn the utmost detesta- 
tion for their crimes, and the most lasting mark of infamy they 
could inflict upon them. This was the account he gave. What 
truth there is in it, is not so certain. Many circumstances make 
the surmise not altogether improbable: as all those enthusiasts, 
to the last moments of their lives, ever gloried in the truth of it." 

2 K 



498 LIFE Or MILTON. 

Blake/ of the mild and the amiable Clay- 
pole, one of whom had strenuously opposed 
all the crimes of her father's ambition and 
the other had carried the thunder and the 
fame of his country to the extremities of the 
world, we are shocked by the infamy of the 
deed, and are tempted in the bitterness of 
our hearts to vent a curse upon the savage- 
ness of the perpetrators. 

" Glows our resentment into guilt? — what guilt 
Can equal violations of the dead ? 
The dead how sacred ! sacred is the dust 
Of this heaven -labour' d form, erect, divine. 

8 Respecting the great Blake, whose name occupies the first 
place in our naval annals, and who, for integrity and a truly pa- 
triotic spirit, is unquestionably one of the first characters in our 
history, the reader can require no information. — Mrs. Claypole 
was the Protector's favourite daughter; and she had been uni- 
form in her opposition to all the violences of his ambition. 
Her intercession for the life of the royalist, Doctor Hewett, had 
been so earnest, that her disappointment on its failure is sup- 
posed to have hastened the crisis of her death. The Protector's 
mother, whose relics were exposed to the same unworthy treat- 
ment, was equally adverse to his elevation and ambitious ex- 
cesses. She was an excellent and amiable woman, and with her 
granddaughter, whom we have just mentioned, was entitled to 
the respect of all parties. Among the bodies torn on this occa- 
sion by brutal revenge from the sanctuary of the tomb, was that 
of May the continuator and translator of Lucan, and that of the 
celebrated Pym. The bodies, which were thus dug up and thrown 
together into a common pit, were more than twenty; and this de- 
testable violation of the grave, was stopped only by the popular 
indignation which it justly excited, and which the prudence of 
the government judged it proper to respect. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 499 

This heaven-assumed majestic robe of earth 
He deign'd to wear, who hung the vast expanse 
With azure bright, and clothed the sun in gold. 
When every passion sleeps, that can offend; 
When strikes us every motive, that can melt; 
When man can wreak his malice uncontroll'd, — 
That strongest curb on insult and ill-will, — 
Then spleen to dust !" — 

Freed from immediate danger. Milton 
had now leisure to reflect on all these re- 
vengeful and dishonourable violences of the 
government; and the impression made on 
his mind by the sufferings of his party may 
be distinctly traced in some pathetic and ani- 
mated strains in the Samson Agonistes. 

" God of our fathers! what is man! 

That thou towards him with hand so various, 

Or might I say contrarious, 

Tetnper'st thy providence through his short course 

Not evenly, as thou rules t 

The angelic orders, and inferior creatures mute, 

Irrational and brute. 

Nor do I name of men the common rout, 

That wandring loose about, 

Grow up and perish, as the summer fly, 

Heads without name no more remembered ; 

But such as thou hast solemnly elected, 

With gifts and graces eminently adorn'd, 

To some great work, thy glory, 

And people's safety, which in part they effect: 

Yet towards these thus dignified, thou oft 

Amidst their heigh th of noon 

Changest thy countenance and thy hand, with no regard 

Of highest favours past 

From thee on them, or them to thee of service 



500 LIFfl OJF MILTON. 

Not only dost degrade them, or remit 

To life obscured, which were a fair dismission, 

But throw'st them lower than thou didst exalt them high ; 

Unseemly falls in human eye, 

Too grievous for the trespass or omission: 

Oft leavest them to the hostile sword 

Of heathen and profane, their carcasses 

To dogs and fowls a prey, or else captived; 

Or to the unjust tribunals, under change of times, 

And condemnation of the ungrateful multitude. 

If these they 'scape, perhaps in poverty, 

With sickness and disease thou bow'st them down, 

Painful diseases, and deform'd, 

In crude old age j 

Though nDt disordinate, yet causeless suffering 

The punishment of dissolute days: in fine, 

Just or unjust alike seem miserable, 

For oft alike both come to evil end." 

Scarcely had Milton left his concealment 
when he was taken into custody, in conse- 
quence, as we may conclude, of the order for 
his apprehension which had been issued by 
the House of Commons on the 16th of June: 
but all our acquaintance with the transaction 
is derived from the followino; minutes in the 
Journals of that House. — 

" Saturday 15th Decern, 1660. 

" Ordered, that Mr. Milton now in cus- 
tody of the Serjeant, attending this House, 
be forthwith released, paying his fees." 

* Mond. nth Decern. 
" A complaint being made, that the Ser- 



LIFE OF MILTON. 501 

jeant at arms had demanded excessive fees 
for the imprisonment of Mr. Milton:" 

" Ordered, that it be referred to a com- 
mittee for privileges, to examine this business, 
and to call Mr. Milton and the Serjeant be- 
fore them, and to determine what is fit to be 
given to the Serjeant for his fees in this case/' 

On his return to society, Milton took a 
house in Holborn near to Red Lion Square; 
which he occupied only for a short term, as 
we find him, in 1662, residing in Jewin 
Street. From this situation he removed to 
a small house in the Artillery Walk adjoining 
to Bunhill Fields, where he continued dur- 
ing the remaining part of his life. The cir- 
cumstance of his lodmns: for some interme- 
diate time, after he left Jewin Street, with 
Millington the celebrated auctioneer, who 
was accustomed to lead his venerable inmate 
by the hand when he walked in the streets, 
is mentioned by Richardson on the testimony 
of a person, who was acquainted with Milton 
and who had frequently met him abroad with 
his conductor and host. The fact therefore 
ought not to be rejected in consequence of 
its omission by the other biographers of our 
author. 

In Jewin Street, on the recommendation 
of his friend Dr. Paget, a physician of emi- 



502 LIFE OF MILTON. 

nence in London to whom the lady was dis- 
tantly related, he married his third wife, 
Elizabeth Minshull, the daughter of a gen- 
tleman of Cheshire. The domestic situation 
of Milton was now such as almost to compel 
him to seek for the aid and the protection 
of a wife. At fifty-four years of age, he was 
in a great degree submitted by his blindness 
to the power of others; and by his studious 
habits, from the indulgence of which all his 
resources of pleasure were derived, he was 
peculiarly disqualified for the management of 
a family. He had not indeed been wholly 
without the counsels and assistance of a fe- 
male friend; for he had been indulged dur- 
ing this period with the intimacy of Lady 
Ranelagh, the favourite and accomplished 
sister of the celebrated Robert Boyle. This 
estimable Lady, who had placed her son 
under Milton's care, seems to have been as- 
siduous in discovering lifer sense of his high 
worth by rendering to him every service, 
which his circumstances could require or 
her's would enable her to offer. In one of 
the four letters to his pupil, which were pub- 
lished with his famjliar epistles, he speaks of 
her, at that time preparing to depart for Ire- 
land, in terms of the most grateful affection: 
" The absence," he says, " of your most excel- 



LIFE OP MILTON. 503 

lent mother must be equally lamented by us 
both; for to me she has supplied the place 
of every friend whom I could want/' But 
his infirmities were of a nature not to admit 
of substantial relief from any but a domestic 
friend; and for alleviation from the kind- 
nesses of filial piety they unhappily solicited 
in vain. From the conduct of his daughters 
he experienced nothing but mortification and 
a^oravated distress. 

His nuncupative f will, which has lately 
been discovered in the Prerogative registry 
and was published by Mr. Warton, g opens a 
glimpse into the interior of Milton's house, 
and shows him to have been amiable and in- 
jured in that private scene, in which alone 
he has general] v been considered as liable to 
censure, or rather perhaps as not intitled to af- 
fection. In this will, and in the papers con- 
nected with it, we find the venerable father 
complaining of his " unkind children/' as he 
calls them, for leaving and neglecting him 

f Nunc discedeos in Hiberniam mater tua praestantissima, 
cujus discessu uterque nostrum dolere baud mediocriter debe- 
mus, nam et mihi omnium necessitudinum loco fuit, has ad te 
literas ipsa perfert. Sept. 21, 1656. P. W. vi. 132. 

8 This will, with the deposition of the witnesses, is published 
as an appendix to the preface of Mr. Warton's 2d edit, of Mil- 
ton's Juvenile Poems, and is well entitled to the reader's notice. 



504 LIFE OF MILTON. 

because he was blind; and we see him com- 
pelled, as it were, bj their injurious conduct 
to appeal against them even to his servants. 
We are assured also, by the deposition on 
oath of one of these servants, that his com- 
plaints were not extorted by slight wrongs, 
or uttered by capricious passion on trivial 
provocations : that his children, with the ex- 
ception probably of Deborah, who at the time 
immediately in question was not more than 
nine years old, would occasionally sell his 
books to the dunghill women, as the witness 
calls them: — that these daughters were capa- 
ble of combining with the maid-servant, and 
of advising her to cheat her master and their 
father in her marketings; and that one of 
them, Mary, on being told that her father 
was to be married, replied that " that was 
no news, but if she could hear of his death 
that were something/' h 

A w^ife, therefore, was necessary to rescue 
him from such undutiful and almost dan- 
gerous hands; and in the lady, whom his 

L Circumstanced as he was at this juncture, and with refer- 
ence to his daughters, Milton might properly be regarded, lik£ 

Lear, as 

■ " a poor old man, 

More sinn'd against than sinning j" 

and might, perhaps, feel 

" How sharper than a serpent's tooth it h 

To have a thankless child." 



LITE OF MILTON 505 

friend selected for him, he seems to have ob- 
tained the assistant whom his circumstances 
demanded. In opposition to the unfavour- 
able report made of her by Philips, and the 
hints on the subject of her temper sug- 
gested by Richardson, she appears to have 
been uniformly attentive and affectionate to 
her husband. She is the sole object of his 
regard in his will; and the general harmony 
of their union is attested by all the deposi- 
tions to that instrument. If her temper ever 
deserted her, it was in consequence of her 
husband's inattention to the advancement of 
his worldly fortunes: and when an offer was 
made to him, soon after their marriage, of a 
restitution of his official situation, she is said 
to have pressed, with much earnest and trou- 
blesome importunity, his acceptance of the 
proffered benefit. But to be in office under 
the new government, and under Charles 
whom he saw polluted with the blood of his 
friends, was abhorrent from all his principles 
and his feelings, and he silenced the solici- 
tations of the lady with, " You are in the 
right: you as other women would ride in 
your coach: my aim is to live and die an 
honest man/' 1 

1 The fact is mentioned by Richardson ; and rests upon au- 
thority which seems to be decisive. Richardson received it 



506 LIFE OF MILTON. 

About the time of his marriage, or pro- 
bably a little before it, he published a short 
treatise entitled, " Accidence commenced 

from Henry Bendyshe (a grandson, I believe, of the Protector's) 
who was an intimate in Milton's house, and who had heard it 
mentioned by his family. No less doubtful testimony would 
induce me to admit so strong an instance of the placability of 
Charles. To Thurloe, however, it is certain that a similar 
offer was madej and we can only infer from these, what we 
may collect from other instances of his conduct, that Charles's 
prudence could sometimes prevail over his revenge j or that his 
inattention to business, in consequence of his unrestrained pur- 
suit of pleasure, induced him to resign the management of these 
affairs into the hands of others, who were not actuated by his 
passions. 

I am not surprised that Dr. Johnson should treat this cir- 
cumstance as an obscure story; and place it among those " large 
offers and sturdy rejections," which his own feelings taught him 
to consider as the visions of romance, and to be classed with 
" the most common topics of falsehood." Any other language 
would have been inconsistent from the lips of the pensioned advo- 
cate of government in some of its most unconstitutional and 
unfortunate measures. Dr. Johnson's admirers must forgive 
me, if, with considerable respect for his moral and intellectual 
Character, I am tempted to observe that he actually wanted the 
power to comprehend the greatness and elevation of Milton's 
mind. 

Mrs. Milton survived her husband, in a state of widow- 
hood, nearly fifty-five years, dying at Namptwich in her native 
Cheshire, about the year 1729. She related that her husband 
composed principally in the winter; and on his waking in the 
morning would make her write down sometimes twenty or 
thirty verses. On being asked whether he did not frequently 
read Homer and Virgil, she replied that, " he stole from no- 
body but the muse who inspired him." To a lady, inquiring 
who the muse was, she answered, " it was God's grace and the 
Holy Spirit that visited him nightly." (Newton's Life of Milton.) 



LIFE OF MILTON. 507 

Grammar/' intended to facilitate the firstweak 
step of the juvenile student; and remark- 
able only for its exhibition of a mighty mind 
stooping in dignified condescension to uti- 
lity, and regarding nothing as high or no- 
thing as low otherwise than as it referred to 
the discharge of duty and the good of his 
species. In the same year also he gave to 
4:he public another manuscript of the great 
Ralegh's, with the title of " Aphorisms of 
State." 

By the publication of these inconsider- 
able works, and by his known losses from the 
change of government, it is probable that 
his enemies were encouraged at this junc- 
ture to insult over his poverty ; and to 
speak of him as writing for his bread. Of 
these topics of their malignity the following 
lines, preserved by Richardson and eminent 
only for their malice, may be cited as an in- 
stance: 

Upon John Milton's not suffering for his traiterous 
Book when the Tryers were executed, 1660. 

ee That thou escaped'st k that vengeance, which overtook, 
Milton, thy regicides, and thy own book, 

k When Milton complains of evil tongues, Dr. Johnson says 
" the charge itself seems to be false, for it would be hard to re- 
collect any reproach cast upon him, either serious or ludicrous, 
through the whole remaining part of his life." — Besides the 



508 LITE OF MILTON. 

"Was clemency in Charles beyond compare: 
And yet thy doom doth prove more grievous far. 
Old, sickly, poor, stark blind, thou writest for bread 
So for to live thou'dst call Salmasius from the dead." 



lines, which I have here cited, it would be easy to produce 
many more effusions of malevolence, of which Milton was th© 
object during his life time; and which fully justify his com- 
plaints, and our execration of the malignity of party. 

As a story, which I have seen in print, (but by whom told 
or on what authority I know not,) is in perfect harmony with 
the point and spirit of these verses, it shall be inserted for the 
amusement of my readers. It bears some internal marks of 
authenticity, and exhibits very justly the gay and the gloomy 
malignity of the two royal brothers, Charles and James. 

" The Duke of York, as it is reported, expressed one day 
to the king his brother a great desire to see old Milton of 
whom he had heard so much. The king replied that he felt no 
objection to the Duke's satisfying his curiosity: and accordingly, 
soon afterwards James went privately to Milton's house; where, 
after an introduction which explained to the old republican the 
rank of his guest, a free conversation ensued between these very 
dissimilar and discordant characters. In the course however 
of the conversation, the Duke asked Milton whether he did not 
regard the loss of his eye-sight as a judgment inflicted on him 
for what he had written against the late king. Milton's reply 
was to this effect ; " If your Highness thinks that the calami- 
ties which befall us here are indications of the wrath of Heaven, 
in what manner are we to account for the fate of the king your 
father? The displeasure of Heaven must upon this supposition 
have been much greatef against him than against me — for I have 
lost only my eyes, but he lost his head." 

Much discomposed by this answer, the Duke soon took his 
leave and went away. On his return to Court, the first words 
which he spoke to the king were, — " Brother, you are greatly 
to blame that you don't have that old rogue Milton hanged." 
" Why — what is tne matter, James," said the King, " you seem 



LIFE OF MILTON. 509 

But the moderation of his wants still 
kept him at a distance from poverty; and 
they, who could suppose him to be unhappy, 
must have been ill acquainted with the con- 
solations of conscious rectitude, or with the 
exquisite gratification to be enjoyed by a 
mind affluent in knowledge, and by an ima- 
gination which could range without control! 
through the spacious walks of the universe. 

Soon after Milton's establishment in Jewin 
street, Ellwood the quaker was introduced 
to his acquaintance by Doctor Paget. Ell- 
wood, who is one of the most considerable 
of the writers of his sect, has left behind him 
a history of his life; and, from his accidental 
intercourse with the author of Paradise Lost, 
he is raised into an object of our particular 
regard. He was the son of an Oxfordshire 
magistrate ; and falling at an early period 
of life into the opinions of quakerism he in- 
curred the displeasure of his family, and ex- 

in a heat. What? have you seen Milton?" ''Yes," answered 
the Duke, " I have seen him." <( Well," said the King, te in 
what condition did you find him ?" ** Condition? why he is old 
and very poor." " Old and poor! Well, and he is blind too — 
is he not?"—** Yes, blind as a beetle." " Why then," observed 
the King, ** you are a fool, James, to have him hanged as a pu- 
nishment: to hang him will be doing him a service ; it will be : 
taking him out of his miseries — No — if he be old, poor, and 
blind, he is miserable enough: — in all conscience, let him 
live !"— 



510 LIFE OF MILTON. 

posed himself to a variety of distressful inci- 
dents. To an ardent zeal for the tenets of 
his peculiar sect he united a strong passion 
for literature; which, having been removed 
prematurely from school by the oeconomy of 
his father, he had hitherto been indulged 
with few opportunities of gratifying. With 
the hope of advancing himself in classical 
knowledge, he now solicited an introduction, 
in the character of a reader, to Milton; and 
in this great man, conciliated by the inge- 
nuousness of his manners and by the good- 
ness of his heart, Ellwood soon found a friend 
as well as an instructor. If the beneficial 
commerce indeed had not experienced fre- 
quent interruptions in consequence of those 
misfortunes, to which he was subjected as 
the member of a sect at that juncture the 
object of particular and violent persecution, 
the defects of the young quakers education 
>vould probably have been soon and af- 
fluently supplied. For the purpose of being 
near to his new friend, Ellwood settled him- 
self in a lodging in the vicinity of Jewin street; 
and attended on every afternoon, that of sun- 
day excepted, to read such Roman authors as 
his patron was desirous of hearing. 

In the commencement of this intercourse, 
Milton was studious to form his reader'^ 



LIFE OF MILTON. 511 

tongue to the foreign pronunciation of the 
latin, assigning, as a reason for his conduct, 
the impossibility of conversing with foreigners 
without this condescension to the habit of 
their ears. Whether the object were really 
of the magnitude attributed to it by Milton, 
I should be much inclined to question: but 
it was not, of course, disputed by Ellwood; 
whose perseverance, though with consider- 
able difficulty, finally achieved it and suc- 
ceeded in accommodating; his accents to his 
master's taste. As he proceeded in reading 
the classics his tones would frequently betray 
his ignorance of what he read, and Milton 
would then stop him to explain the passage 
which seemed not to be understood. This re- 
ciprocally of service and reward was soon 
however suspended b}^ a severe fit of illness, 
which obliged Ellwood to retire to the house 
of a friend in the country. On his recovery 
he returned to town, and resumed his situa- 
tion as reader in our author's study, where he 
uniformly experienced the kindness of a friend 
and the instructions of a master. After a 
short interval, he was again separated from 
this beneficial connexion by the circumstance 
of his being seised in a quaker meeting by 
a party of soldiers, and detained for a consi- 
derable time with his associates in a succes- 



512 LIFE OF MILTON. 

sion of prisons. When he was liberated from 
these most iniquitous inflictions, he obtained 
admission into the family of an opulent quaker, 
at Chalfont in Buckinghamshire, in the qua- 
lity of instructor to his son: and in this situa- 
tion, when the plague was ravaging the me- 
tropolis, Ellwood was enabled to show his 
regard for Milton by hiring a small house for 
him at Chalfont St. Giles. 

Here, after another period of absence 
occasioned by a second imprisonment, the 
young quaker called upon his friend, and 
received from him at their first interview a 
manuscript, which the author desired him to 
carry home and to read at' his leisure. This 
manuscript was that of Paradise Lost. " After 
I had with the best attention read it through/' 
says the respectable Ellwood, " I made him 
another visit, and returned him his book, 
with due acknowledgment of the favour he 
had done me in communicating it to me. 
He asked me how I liked it, and what I 
thought of it: which I modestly and freely 
told him ; and, after some further discourse, 
I pleasantly said to him, Thou hast said 
much here of Paradise lost; but what hast 
thou to sav of Paradise found? He made me 
no answer, bat sat some time in a muse: then 
broke off that discourse, and fell upon ano- 



LIFE OF MILTON 513 

ther subject. After the sickness was over, 
and the city well cleansed and become safely 
habitable again, he returned thither; and 
when afterwards I went to wait upon him, 
(which 1 seldom failed of doing whenever my 
occasions led me to London,) he showed me 
his second poem, called Paradise Regained, 
and in a pleasant tone said to me, this is 
owing to you, for you put it into my head 
by the question you put to me at Chalfont, 
which before I had not thought of." 

The term of Milton's residence at Chal- 
font has not been precisely specified ; but from 
the circumstances to which it w r as accom- 
modated, the prevalence and the extirpation 
of the plague in the capital, we may infer 
that it extended from the June or the July of 
1665 to the March or the April of the follow- 
ing year. In this period, as I fully concur 
in opinion with its editor, Mr. Dunster, was 
the poem of Paradise Regained not only 
begun, but brought to its conclusion. It 
was shown, as we have just been informed, 
to Ellwood on his first visit to London after 
the author's return from Chalfont; and there 
is nothing in the poem, whether we respect 
its length or the style of its composition, evi- 
dently marked with the characters of haste, 
which can induce us to reject as improbable 

2 L 



514 LIFE OF MILTOX. 

the fact of its production, by a mind like 
Milton's, in the space of ten months. 

Though he was destined at this juncture 
of his party's disgrace to experience the 
neglect if not the enmity of his ungrateful 
countrymen, Milton still lived in the esti- 
mation of the learned and the illustrious 
of other nations; by whom his safety, in this 
fatal season, was acknowledged to be an 
object of solicitous interest. A rumour had 
been circulated of his having fallen under 
the desolating disease; and his foreign friends 
were anxious to have their apprehensions 
relieved, and to express their gratification 
on the event of his escape. Of this we 
possess authentic evidence in the last of his 
familiar epistles, written in answer at this 
time to Peter Heimbach; 1 a learned German, 
who had formerly, as it would appear, been 
assisted by our author's instructions, and who 
was now advanced to a station of dignity and 
trust in the Electoral government of Bran- 
denburgh. The letter in question is of a 



1 1 have seen a gratulatory address to Cromwell, written in 
Latin by this Peter Heirnbach, and printed in London in 1656. 
Of this production I cannot speak in terms of high commenda- 
tion. Violence of praise may be indulged to a professed pane- 
gyric : but the whole composition is stiff and inflated, and in a 
taste very different from that of his great correspondent. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 515 

nature to merit insertion, and fully to com- 
pensate the reader for its short interruption 
of the narrative. 



Omatissimo Viro Petro Heimbachio, Electoris 
Brandenburgici Comiliario . 

Si inter tot funera popularium meorum, 
anno tarn gravi ac pestilenti, abreptum me 
quoque, ut scribis, ex rumore praesertim ali- 
quo credidisti, mirum non est; atque ille ru- 
mor apud vestros, ut videtur, homines, si ex 
eo quod de salute mea soliciti essent incre- 
buit, non displicet; indicium enim suae erga 
me benevolentiae fuisse existimo. Sed Dei 
benignitate, qui tutum mihi receptum in 
agris paraverat, et vivo adhuc et valeo; uti- 
nam ne inutilis, quicquid muneris in h&c vit& 
restat mihi peragendum. Tibi vero tarn longo 
intervallo venisse in mentem mei, pergratum 
est: quanquam, prout rem verbis exornas, 
praebere aliquem suspicionem videris, obli- 
tum mei te potius esse, qui tot virtutum di- 
versarum conjugium in me, ut scribis, admi- 
rere. Ego certe ex tot conjugiis numero- 
sam nimis prolem expavescerem, nisi con- 
staret in re arct& rebusque duris virtutes ali 
maxime et vigere: tametsi earum una non ita 
bellfe charitatem hospitii mihi reddidit: quam 



516 LIFE OF MILTON. 

enim politicam tu vocas, ego pietatem in pa- 
triam dictam abs te mallem, ea me pulchro 
nomine delinitum prope, ut ila dicam, ex- 
patriavit. Reliquarum tamen chorus clare 
concinit. Patria est, ubicunque est bene. 
Finem faciam, si hoc prius abs te impetra- 
vero, ut, si quid mendose descriptum aut non 
interpunctum repereris, id puero, qui ha*c 
excepit, latinfe prorsus nescienti velis impu- 
tare; cui singulas plane literulas annumerare 
non sine miseri& dictans cogebar. Tua in- 
terim viri merita, quern ego adolescentem 
spei eximiee cognovi, ad tarn honestum in 
principis gratis provexisse te locum, gaudeo, 
caeteraque fausta omnia et cupio tibi, et 
spero. Vale. 

Londini, Aug. 15, 1666. 



To the most accomplished Peter Heimbach, Coun- 
sellor of State to the Elector of Brandenburgh. 

" That, in a year so pestilential and so 
fatal as the present, amidst the deaths of so 
many of my compatriots, you should have be- 
lieved me likewise, as you write me word, in 
consequence too of some rumour or other, to 
have fallen a victim, excites in me no sur- 
prise: and if that rumour owed its currency 



LIFE OF MILTOX. 517 

among you, as it seems to have done, to an 
anxiety for my welfare, I feel flattered by 
it as an .instance of your friendly regard. 
Through the goodness of God however, who 
had provided me with a safe retreat in the 
country, I still live and am well; and, 
would that I could add, not incompetent to 
any duty which it may be my further des- 
tiny to discharge. 

But that after so long an interval I 
should have recurred to your remembrance, 
is highly gratifying to me; though to judge 
from your eloquent embellishments of the 
matter, when you profess your admiration of 
so many different virtues united in my single 
person, you seem to furnish some ground for 
suspecting that I have indeed escaped from 
your recollection. From such a number of 
unions, in fact, I should have cause to dread 
a progeny too numerous, were it not ad- 
mitted that in disgrace and adversity the vir- 
tues principally increase and flourish. One 
of them however has not made me any very 
grateful return for her entertainment; for 
she whom you call the political, (though I 
would rather that you had termed her love 
of country,) after seducing me with her fine 
name, has nearly, if I may so express myself, 



518 LIFE OF MILTON. 

deprived me of a country. The rest indeed 
harmonise more perfectly together. Our 
country is wherever we can live as we ought. 

Before I conclude, I must prevail on you 
to impute whatever incorrectness of ortho- 
graphy or of punctuation you may discover 
in this epistle to my young amanuensis; whose 
total ignorance of Latin has imposed on me 
the disagreeable necessity of actually dic- 
tating to him every individual letter. 

That your deserts as a man, consistently 
with the high promise with which you raised 
my expectations in your youth, should have 
elevated you to so eminent a station in your 
Sovereign's favour gives me the most sincere 
pleasure; and I fervently pray and trust that 
you may proceed and prosper. Farewell!" 

London, August 15, 1666. 

In the middle of the year 1666, Milton, 
as we have seen, had completed his two 
sacred poems: but it was not till after the 
lapse of another twelvemonth that he com- 
mitted either of them to the press. His con- 
tract for the copy-right of Paradise Lost, 
with Samuel Simmons the bookseller, is 
dated April .27, 1667; and in the course of 
that year, the first edition of this grand re- 



LIFE OF MILTON. 519 

suit of intellectual power was given to the 
world . m 

Much surprise and concern have been 
discovered at the small pecuniary benefit, 
which the author was permitted to derive 
from this proud display of his genius, and on 
the slow and laborious progress with which 
the w r ork w^on its way to public estimation. 
To us, in the utmost cultivation of taste and 
accustomed to admire the Paradise Lost with- 
out any reference to its author or to the age 
in which it appeared, it must certainly seem 
deplorable that the copy-right of such a com- 
position should be sold for the actual pay- 
ment of five pounds, and the contingent pay- 
ment, on the sale of two thousand six hun- 
dred copies, of two other equal sums. But 
if we w r ould regard ourselves as placed in the 
middle of the seventeenth century and im- 
mersed in all the party violence of that mi- 
serable period, we should rather be inclined 
to wonder at the venturous liberality of the 
bookseller, who would give even this small 
consideration for the poem of a man living 
under the heaviest frown of the times, in 
whom the poet had long been forgotten in 

m It was first published without the name of the purchaser as 
its printer: but in the subsequent year it received a new title-page 
in which the name of S. Simmons was inserted in its proper place. 



520 LIFE OF MILTON. 

the polemic, and who now tendered an ex- 
periment in verse of which it was impossible 
that the purchaser should be able to appre- 
ciate the value, or should not be suspicious 
of the danger. 

Our shame and regret for the slow ap- 
prehensions of our forefathers, with respect 
to the merits of this illustrious production, 
are still more unwarranted than those which 
have been expressed for the parsimony of the 
bookseller. Before the entire revolution of 
two years, at a lime when learning and the 
love of reading were far from being in their 
present wide diffusion through the commu- 
nity, thirteen hundred copies of the Paradise 
Lost were absorbed into circulation. In five 
years after this period a second edition of the 
poem was issued; and, after another interval 
of four years, a third was conceded to the 
honourable demands of the public. As we 
may fairly conclude that, according to the 
original stipulation of the bookseller, each of 
these impressions consisted of fifteen hundred 
copies, we shall find that in the space of little 
more than eleven years four thousand five 
hundred individuals of the British community 
were possessed of sufficient discrimination to 
become the purchasers of the Paradise Lost. 
Before the expiration of twenty vears the 



LIFE OF MILTON. 521 

poem passed through six editions, a circum- 
stance which abundantly proves that it was 
not destitute of popularity before it obtained 
its full and final dominion over the public 
taste from the patronage of Somers, and still 
more from the criticism of Addison. 

When the great epic was completely pre- 
pared for the press, its birth was on the point 
of being intercepted by the malignity, or 
rather perhaps by the perverse sagacity of the 
licenser; 11 whose quick nostril distinguished 
the scent of treason in that well known simile 
of the sun in the first book : 



f As when the sun new-risen 



Looks through the horizontal misty air, 

Shorn of his beams ; or, from behind the moon, 

In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds 

On half the nations, and with fear of change 

Perplexes monarchs." 

The press was certainly in safe hands 
when it was in those of the present licenser, 
Mr. Tomkyns ; for an eye, which could dive 

n The office of licenser, which had been abolished during the 
usurpation of Cromwell, had now been restored, for a limited 
time, by an act of parliament passed in 1662, By this act the 
press, with reference to its different productions, was placed 
under the dominion of the Judges, some of the Officers of State, 
and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Poetry falling within the 
province of the latter, the fate of Paradise Lost was committed 
to the judgment of the reverend Thomas Tomkyns, one of the 
chaplains of Archbishop Sheldon. 



522 LIFE OF MILTON. 

so deeply and could discern so finely was 
not likely to be baffled by the most pro- 
found, or to be eluded by the most subtle 
and aerial mischief. In the present instance 
there were many points on which the licenser's 
suspicion would rest. " The sun new risen/' 
was an apt representative of Charles, lately 
seated on his throne: " The horizontal misty 
air/' by which he was "shorn of his beams," was 
the political atmosphere thickened with the 
breaths of republicans and levellers, who did 
what they could to diminish the king's glory: 
" the moon," by whose intervention the sun 
was eclipsed, might be the memory of Crom- 
well which darkened the fame of Charles, 
and, by bringing before the popular mind 
the man who acquired Dunkirk, would natu- 
rally place him in eclipsing opposition to the 
man who sold it. In the " disastrous twi- 
light," which was " shed over half the na- 
tions," was clearly to be seen the tyranny of 
Charles, by which the Scots, the northern 
half of the nation, were reduced to a most 
calamitous condition; and finally, Charles 
was a monarch, and might perhaps be " per- 
plexed with fear of change ;" or, if the licenser's 
acuteness should discover in this last appli- 
cation of the simile a confusion of the cause 
with the effect, and should consequently 



LITE OF MILTON. 523 

scruple to admit it, the monarchs whom the 
sun in eclipse thus perplexes might be the two 
archbishops, in gloomy and trembling ap- 
prehension on their metropolitan thrones, 
in consequence of their master's unpopular, 
and of course dangerous conduct. So far 
therefore are we from being surprised at the 
good licenser's hesitation in the case before 
us, that we are rather inclined to blame him 
for negligence of duty, when he permitted a 
passage so pregnant with political rancour to 
issue under his imprimatur into the world. 

The time, during which this noble poem 
engaged the attention of its author, cannot 
be very accurately ascertained. We have al- 
ready remarked, on the authority of Philips, 
that it formed a part of Milton's intellectual 
occupation immediately after the termination 
of his controversy with Morus, about the end 
of the year 1655; and Richardson, from some 
expressions in a letter of the author's to Henry 
Oldenburgh in 1654, is inclined to refer its 
commencement to an earlier date. As it 
was certainly finished in 1665, w r e may ven- 
ture to assign the term of ten or of eleven 
years as that within the limits of which it 
was composed. If we now reflect on the 

e P.W. vi. 127. 



524 LIFE OF MILTON. 

poet's situation during one half of this time; 
if we consider that he was not only blind and 
advanced far towards old age, but was also 
the object of factious hostility and of popular 
neglect; that, deprived of part of his small 
fortune, he was saved from actual poverty 
only by the contraction of his wants; that 
he was " encompassed with dangers as well 
as with darkness;" and, though snatched, as 
it were by miracle, from the vengeance of the 
]aw, was still fearful of the assassin's 15 dagger; 

p The fact is recorded by Richardson. " He was in perpe- 
tual terror of being assassinated; though he had escaped the 
talons of the law he knew he had made himself enemies in 
abundance. He was so dejected, he would lie awake whole 
nights, &c. This Dr. Tancred Robinson had from a relation of 
Milton's, Mrs. Walker of the Temple." (Richard. Remarks, &c. 
p. xciv.) 

In his note on that line, <e In darkness and with dangers 
compass'd round," the same writer observes, " This is explained 
by a piece of secret history for which we have good authority. 
Paradise Lost was written after the restoration when Milton 
apprehended himself to be in danger of his life, first, from public 
vengeance, (having been very deeply engaged against the royal 
party,) and, when safe by pardon, from private malice and re- 
sentment. He was always in fear; much alone; and slept ill. 
When restless, he would ring for the person, who wrote for 
him, (which was his daughter commonly,) to write what he 
composed, which sometimes flowed with great ease." Id. p. 29 1. 

These apprehensions were not those of a weak mind, or felt 
without sufficient cause. The murder of Doryslaus and of As- 
cham, at the Hague and at Madrid, had shown to the world that 
royalist vengeance could assassinate; and the fate of Ludlow* 



LIFE OF MILTON 525 

that he was unprovided with any assistance 
in his literary labours, but that of a girl, or 
of an occasional friend to read to him, and 
to hold the pen as he dictated, — we cannot 
be otherwise than astonished at the boldness 
which could undertake, and at the inex- 
haustible energy of mind which could carry 
to its accomplishment a poem so extended 
in its plan, and so magnificent in its execu- 
tion as the Paradise Lost. 

The origin of this great production, or 
the first spark which kindled the idea in the 
poet's mind, has been made the subject of cu- 
rious, and perhaps over-anxious inquiry. On 
his visit to England in 1727? Voltaire suggested 
that the hint of the Paradise Lost had been 
supplied by the Adamo a poor drama, stuffed 
with bombast, conceit, and allegory, written, 
by one Andreini a strolling player of Itaty. 
This suggestion by the lively Frenchman ob- 
tained little regard at the time when it was 
offered; and it has since been contemptuously 
rejected by Dr. Johnson. From its adoption 
however by Mr. Hayley and Dr. Warton, it 
has acquired some new importance; and, 

pursued with daggers into the heart of Switzerland, fully demon- 
strated that, at the time of which we are speaking party rancour 
had resigned no portion of its revengeful and sanguinary atrocity. 



526 LIFE OF MILTON. 

when fully examined, it appears by no means 
to be destitute of probability. 

Paradise Lost, as we know not only on 
the testimony of Philips but from the author's 
MSS, q preserved in the library of Trinity coll. 
Cambridge, was first designed in the form of 
a tragedy, to be opened with the address of 
Satan to the sun, now inserted in the begin- 
ning of the fourth book of the poem. In the 
different schemes which we possess of this 
projected drama, we observe various allego- 

i These MSS, of which we have before had occasion to speak, 
were found among some papers belonging to Sir Henry Newton 
Puckering, who was a great benefactor to Trinity Coll. library. 
They were subsequently collected, and bound by the care and 
at the expence of Mr. Clarke, at that time a fellow of Trim 
Coll. and afterwards one of the King's Counsel. These MSS 
consist, in the author's own hand, of two draughts of his letter 
to a friend who had pressed him to engage in some profession; 
several of his juvenile poems, a few of his sonnets, and a variety 
of dramatic schemes, some on the subject of Paradise Lost, and 
many on other subjects taken from sacred or profane his- 
tory. In these MSS are numerous interlineations and correc- 
tions; stops are seldom used; and the verses frequently begin 
with small letters. Among these papers are copies of some of 
the sonnets, composed after the author's loss of sight, which are 
written by different hands. 

Dr. Pearce, who was afterwards bishop of Rochester, in the 
preface to his remarks on Bentley's edition of the Paradise Lost, 
supposes that Milton derived the hint of his poem from an Italian 
tragedy called II Paradiso perso; which Dr. Pierce, however, had 
not seen, and which we know of no person who has seen. Pre- 
face to Remarks, &c. p. 7. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 52? 

rical beings introduced among its persons, 
and on comparing them with those in An- 
dreini's production, which, as Mr. Hayley 
properly remarks, is not so contemptible a 
work as we have been taught to consider it, 
we shall find it difficult to refer the strong re- 
semblance, which will strike us, to the effect 
of chance, or to believe that Milton could 
have drawn the schemes in question if he had 
never seen the Adamo of Andreini. As we are 
assured however, by the passages which we 
have noticed in the Damon, that Arthur or 
some other British hero was intended by the 
author after his return from Italy for the 
subject of his epic muse, it seems not impro- 
bable that he was fostering this idea at the 
time when he was revolving the plan of his 
sacred drama; and that he thus meditated 
the execution of two great and distinct poetic 
compositions. It is uncertain in what happy 
moment he determined on assigning to the 
Paradise Lost the honour of being his chief 
work, and of placing this divine theme upon 
the summit of the Aonian mount. 

For the adoption of blank verse, as the 
instrument of his muse, he had not only the 
example of Trissino's Italia Liberata, of which 
probably he never thought, but that also of 



528 LIFE OP MILTON. 

Tasso/ by which it is fair to conclude that 
he was principally influenced, if the success- 
ful attempt in his own language of the illus- 
trious Surrey should not be allowed to have 
impressed him with the determining bias. 

It does not belong to the plan of the pre- 
sent work to enter into a regular examina- 
tion of the beauties and the defects of the Pa- 
radise Lost; and they have so frequently un- 
dergone the investigation of acute and power- 
ful minds, that nothing more can be expected 
on the ground than a few straggling ears after 
a well gathered harvest. If any part of this 
admirable poem has still reason to complain 
of defective justice, it is that of its diction 
and its numbers. These seem to be consi- 
dered by Addison rather as the subjects of 
apology and defence than of praise; and 
Johnson has shown himself to be wholly un- 
qualified for the task of appreciating their 
worth. From the power of Milton the Eng- 
lish language has obtained a sublimity ade- 
quate to the loftiest conceptions of the hu- 

f Tasso is celebrated by his friend and biographer, the Mar- 
quis of Villa, for the introduction of blank verse into the Italian 
poetry. Tasso wrote a poem without rhyme on the Creation. 

The Earl of Surrey translated into blank verse the second and 
the fourth book of the iEneid. 



LIFE OP MILTON 52Q 

man mind; and a variety and a richness of 
harmony on which his poetic successors, in- 
cluding the great Dryden himself, have been 
utterly unable to improve. 

One of the principal defects of the poem 
is occasioned by the ambitious attempt of 
the poet to give sensible action to the nega- 
tive idea of spirit. It is an opinion, in itself 
most probable and entertained by many 
eminent divines, that the Deity is the only 
perfectly disembodied spirit in the universe. 
Limited agency indeed seems to be incom- 
patible with a substance which, occupying 
no space, is without locality; which is con- 
sequently every where and entirely present, 
and which therefore must necessarily be ca- 
pable of acting every where at the same 
instant with an equal and undivided force. 
The highest intelligences then, who approach 
the most nearly to the throne of the Supreme, 
must be supposed to be invested with bodies, 
and may consequently without impropriety 
or inconsistency be introduced into the 
action of dramatic or of epic song. But 
Milton was resolved to make his angelic 
beings spirits, in the higher acceptation of 
the word spirit, and has of course been led 
into difficulties and contrarieties. With bo- 

2 m 



530 LIFE OF MILTON 

dies defined, though not restrained as to di- 
mension and shape, operating with successive 
action, obnoxious to corporeal pain and to 
impressions from external matter, these super- 
human agents are declared to be " incorpo- 
real spirits;" and are, on some occasions, en- 
dued with the peculiar properties of spiritual 
substances. 5 In the sixth book this embar- 
rassment more evidently or rather more strik- 
ingly occurs; and I agree with Dr. John- 
son, who has remarked the incongruity, in 
placing this book, astonishingly sublime as 
are many of its passages, among the least 
happy of the twelve which constitute the 
poem. 

On the introduction of the persons of 
Sin and Death, and the action which is at- 
tributed to them, I must confess myself to 
dissent in opinion from the able critic whom 
I have just named, as well as from Addison; 
to whose taste, if not to whose power of in- 
tellect, I feel much more inclined to bow in 
submissive deference. When he formed these 
personages and blended them with the agents 
of his poem, the poet appears tome to have 

t When Satan in the toad affects the mind of Eve, and pre- 
sents what pictures he pleases to her imagination, he is evi- 
dently spirit which can blend with sj_ i it, and act immediate!/ 
upon it without the intervention of the bodily organs. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 531 

availed himself of an indisputable privilege of 
his art; and, having endued them with con- 
sistent action, to be no more censurable for 
their creation than for that of Moloch or of 
Belial, with whom in fact they exist in equally 
substantial being. The whole of the ma- 
chinery of Homer has been explained into 
allegory; and the Grecian bard, when he de- 
solates the camp of the Greeks with the arrows 
of Apollo, is as open to reprehension as the 
English, when he opposes the progress of 
Satan with the dart of Death: in the first in- 
stance, the plain fact to be related is the 
ravage of a pestilence; and in the last, the 
danger of annihilation to which the adven- 
turous Archangel was exposed by the attempt 
to break from his prison. If any authority 
were wanted to support Milton in this parti- 
cular exertion of his poetic prerogative, it 
might easily be obtained from the sacred 
scriptures. In these, Sin is in more than one 
place distinctly personified; and Death is not 
only described as the last enemy whom the 
Son of God is to vanquish, but, in a dread- 
fully sublime passage in the Apocalypse, is 
invested with specific and formidable agency, 
" mounted upon a pale horse, with all hell fol- 
lowing in his train/' 

With Addison, I have always regretted 



532 LIFE OF MILTON. 

the discontinuance of the story in vision, 
at the commencement of the twelfth book; 
and have regarded the circumstance, whe- 
ther resulting from apprehended difficulty 
or from error in the great poet's judgment, 
as forming a blemish in the work and con- 
ducting it with abated vigour to the goal. 
But to suggest the defects of this glorious 
poem would be a short labour, while a dis- 
play of its beauties would occupy a volume. 
With respect to grandeur of conception, it 
must be regarded as the first, and to the gene- 
ral exhibition of intellectual power, as un- 
questionably the second among all the pro- 
ductions of human genius; while, in the sub- 
ordinate excellences of composition, it will 
be found to yield the precedency only to the 
wonderful Iliad/ or to the august and po- 
lished iEneid. If we reflect indeed on the 
greatly inferior language, in which the Eng- 
lish poet has been compelled to embody the 
creatures of his brain, we shall be much more 
surprised at the approach in perfection which 
he has made to the poetic diction of the two 
mighty masters of heroic song, than at his 

u When I make this assertion I am not ignorant of the great 
and daring imagination of Dante, of the sportive and affluent 
fancy of Ariosto; of the powerful yet regulated and classic genius 
of Tasso. 



LIFE OF MILTON* 533 

acknowledged inability to exalt the beauty 
and harmony of his muse into a doubtful 
competition with theirs. 

In the second edition of the Paradise 
Lost, which was published, as we have al- 
ready suggested, in 1674, the author divided 
the seventh and the tenth book, for the pur- 
pose of breaking the length of their narra- 
tion, each into two; and thus changed the 
original distribution of his work from ten 
into twelve books. On this new arrange- 
ment, the addition of a few lines became ne- 
cessary to form a regular opening to the 
eighth and the twelfth book; and these nine 
verses,* for such is their number, with six 

x The additional Lines are the following ones included between 
the inverted commas i{ 

Boor VIII. 
i( The angel ended, and in Adam's ear 
" So charming left his voice, that he awhile 
u Thought him still speaking -, still stood fix'd to hear: 
" Then as new waked" thus gratefully replied," 

Book XII. 
" As one who on his journey bates at noon 
" Though bent on speed: so here th' Archangel paused 
" Betwixt the world destroy'd, and world restored: 
" If Adam aught perhaps might interpose; 
t( Then with transition sweet, new speech resumes"— 

Book V. v. 637. 

They eat, they drink, and " in communion sweet 
" Quaff immortality and joy, secure 



534 LIFE OF MILTON. 

others, inserted partly in the fifth book and 
partly in the eleventh, constituted all the 
alterations deemed necessary by the poet 
in that mighty production of his mind, on 
which his fame with posterity was princi- 
pally to rest and which formed the great and 
the crowning exploit of his life. The Paradise 
Lost therefore may be contemplated with 
more wonder as springing, like another Pal- 
las, in a state of full maturity from the head 
of its mighty father, and proudly relinquish- 
ing every subsequent demand on him for the 
assistance of parental affection. I notice 
this circumstance indeed, which has been 
remarked before me by Fenton, rather for 
its curiosity than to detract from the merit 
of those, who make their advances to rela- 
tive perfection by frequent and laborious re- 
vision. The final excellence of the work is 
all with which the w-orld is concerned; and 
the existence of the mental power, which 

' ' Of surfeit,, where full measure only bounds 
Excess/' before th' all-bounteous king, &c. 

Book XI. v. 484. 
" Demoniac phrenzy, moaping melancholy," 
" And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy. 
*' Marasmus,, and wide-wasting pestilence." 

■ V. 551. 
Of rend'ring up, " and patiently attend 

My dissolution," &c. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 535 

eventually accomplishes the object, is all that 
respects the reputation of llie writer. 

That, under the disadvantage of blind- 
ness, the poet should be able to preserve en- 
tire the combination of such a poem as the 
Paradise Lost, is indeed a just subject of 
surprise. In compositions of any length, in 
which strict unity of design is required, the 
author, after the first construction of his fable, 
has his papers before him to correct those acci- 
dental deviations from his course, into which 
he may unwarily have been betrayed. But 
without this resource against error, and with 
a very inadequate substitute for it in the occa- 
sional readings of a friend., Milton must have 
retained in his memory all the intricacies of 
his fable; and have seen them all, during the 
time of composition, in one strong point of 
concentrated vision. Through the whole ex- 
tent of his poem no incongruity is to be de- 
tected; and all the various lines are drawn 
with infallible rectitude to their just 7 point. 

y A modern French critic (L»Harpe in his Lyceum, vol. xiv.} 
calls the Paradise Lost a shapeless production, — a poem which 
has neither course nor planj and which joins to many other 
faults that of terminating at the end of the fifth canto, so that 
it is impossible to wade through what follows without languor! ! ! 
To what cause are we to impute this strange language of the 
critic ? It seems to argue the most entire ignorance of his sub- 
ject in union with the most consummate conceit: but it may 



536 LIFE OF MILTON. 

Bentley indeed imagined that he had disco- 
vered inconsistency in the relations, in dif- 
ferent parts of the poem, of the expulsion of 
the rebel Angels from heaven : but the acute- 
ness of the great critic, which had been so 
illustriously displayed in a variety of preced- 
ing instances, failed him in this; as it did in 
almost every other when it was exercised on 
the Paradise Lost. 2 In the sixth book, the 
apostate Angels are certainly driven into the 
deep by the sole might of the Messiah: but 
although the army of the faithful, which had 
before been engaged in the combat, 

" silent stood, 
Eye-witnesses of his Almighty acts," 

proceed from nothing more than the wish of propitiating po- 
pular regard by the sacrifice of a majestic foe on the altar of na- 
tional vanity. 

z The great Bentley, when he undertook the editing of Mil- 
ton, was far advanced in age, and soon after this work, which 
formed his last publication, his faculties discovered very evident 
decline. In many of his former works he has displayed a vigour 
and sagacity of mind, an extent and accuracy of erudition which 
are truly wonderful, and which, perhaps, have never been ex- 
ceeded. But his edition of Milton, though it exhibits many 
characters of the great critic, must be pronounced to be alto- 
gether an egregious failure. To the critical sagacity of Bentley 
may be applied what Virgil says of the sword of Metiscus. 
" Idque diu dum terga dabant palantia Teucri 

SufFecit: postquam arma Dei ad Vulcania ventum, 

Mortalis mucro, glacies ceu futilis, ictu 

Dissiluit." 



LIFE OF MILTON. 537 

and advanced to meet him on his returning 
from the victory, it is not asserted that his 
immediate ministers, the " ten thousand thou- 
sand saints" a who attended him from the 
throne of God, did not pursue the enemy in 
their fall, and " hang on their broken rear:" 
the contrary, indeed, seems to be implied 
when it is said that 

" Eternal wrath 
Burnt after them to the bottomless pit." 

When Satan therefore in the first book ob- 
serves, 

" But see the angry victor hath recall'd 
His ministers of vengeance and pursuit 
Back to the gates of heaven :" 

and when Chaos, in the second, declares that 
he saw as, 

" Heaven 
Pour'd out by millions her victorious bands 
Pursuing." 

no contradiction is necessarily intimated. 

But admitting that these accounts were 
irreconcileable with the fact, as it is related 
by Raphael, the difficulty would vanish when 
we considered the persons by whom the va- 
rying circumstances are mentioned. Could 
an accurate report of such an event be ex- 
pected from a personification of Chaos, to 

a Par. Lost, vi. 767. 



538 LIFE OF MILTON. 

whom the uproar and the tumult of a rout 
which " incumbered him with ruin/' and 
made him sensihle of " tenfold confusion/' 
must have been the leading if not the sole 
object of regard? or from beings under the 
overwhelming astonishment attributed to the 
rebels at this tremendous crisis of their fate, 
when " ten thousand thunders infixed plagues 
in their souls," when they were " pursued 
with terrours and with furies," and when their 
senses were so confounded that they lay for 
nine days in a state of complete oblivion on 
" the fiery surge which received them falling 
from the precipice of heaven?" Their over- 
throw however is uniformly ascribed to the 
thunders of their adversary, with the power 
of whose " dire arms" they were till then un- 
acquainted; and whose " red right hand" had 
been exerted " to plague them." The cohe- 
rency therefore of the fable in this wonder- 
ful poem must be allowed to be perfect; 
and as a cause of surprise, with reference to 
the particular situation of the author, to be 
exceeded only by an equal consistency dis- 
coverable in the Iliad; — if in truth that 
mighty intellectual effort be as certainly the 
work of a blind, as it was of a single man. b 

b This is spoken with reference to some extravagances, though 
not perhaps absolute novelties of opinion, which have lately 



LIFE OF MILTON. 539 

Much has been said on the unequal flow 
of Milton's genius; and by some it has been 
represented as under the influence of parti- 
cular seasons, while by others it has been 
regarded as the effect of immediate and po- 
sitive inspiration. Philips declares that his 
Tincle's poetic faculty was vivid only in the 
winter, and Toland assigns the spring as the 
season of its peculiar activity; while Richard- 
son, with a proper respect to the ardent cha- 
racter of the author's mind, expresses a doubt 
whether such a work could be suffered for any 
considerable period to stand absolutely still. 

Philips, to whom his relation was accus- 
tomed to show the poem in its progress, in- 
forms us that, in consequence of not having 

been supported by a few German scholars. These learned men, 
who are endued with microscopic vision, 

" To inspect a mite, not comprehend the heaven," 

would wish us to believe that the Iliad was composed at different 
periods by different rhapsodists, and was not originally committed 
to writing. By any person capable of comprehending the full 
force of the internal evidence. suggested by the Iliad, these fancies 
must be immediately rejected as utterly unworthy of attention. 

c In one of his letters to his friend Deodati, Milton says 
that when he was engaged in any study, he was urged to prose- 
cute it with his full vigour and application, and was impatient 
of interruption in his pursuit. se Meum sic est ingenium, nulla 
ut mora, nulla quies, nulla ferme illius rei cura aut cogitatio dis- 
tineat, quoad pervadam quo feror, et grandem aliquam studio- 
rum meorum quasi periodum conficiam." * 

* P.W. vi. 114. 



540 LIFE OF MILTON. 

seen any verses for some time on the advance 
of summer, he requested to know the cause 
of what appeared to him to be extraordinary, 
and was told in reply by the poet, that " his 
vein never flowed happily, but from the au- 
tumnal equinox to the vernal; and that what 
he attempted at other times was never to his 
satisfaction, though he courted his fancy ever 
so much/" d In opposition to this, and in sup- 
port of his own opinion, Toland adduces the 
information given to him by a friend of Mil- 
ton's and the testimony of the bard himself, 
who in his beautiful elegy on the arrival of 
spring speaks of this delightful season as re- 
novating and invigorating his genius. 6 While 

d On this passage from Philips Dr. Johnson, forced as he is 
to admit the unequal and uncertain flow of the human imagi- 
natin, insults over the weak fancies of Milton, and the still 
weaker credulity of his biographers. This, Dr. Johnson was at 
liberty to do:— but he goes rather too far when he charges 
Milton with holding an opinion, respecting the general decay 
and old age of Nature, which Milton has himself expressly con- 
tradicted. [See his Latin verses with the title of " Naturam non 
pati senium."] 

e I will insert the passage in question from Milton's beautiful 
elegy, with a translation of it by him to whose memory I have 
indulged myself by inscribing the present work. I had asked my 
admirable son for a version of the entire elegy : but his diffidence 
had induced him to refuse what my acquaintance with his talents 
and taste had impelled me to request. Among his papers however 
was found after his decease a considerable part of the translation, 
executed in such a manner as to make the circumstance of his 
not having completed it a subject of real regret. Though the 



LIFE OF MILTON. 541 

the former part of this evidence cannot be 

last polishing touches of his pen are evidently wanting, I persuade 
myself that my readers will perceive sufficient beauty in the lines, 
which I submit to them, to justify me for thus bringing forward 
what the modesty and fine taste of the writer unquestionably des- 
tined to oblivion. — I transcribe only that part of his translation 
which relates immediately to my subject : but what remains of 
the imperfect work is in a style of equal merit. 

IN ADVENTUM VERIS. 

In se perpetuo Tempus revolubile gyro 

Jam revocat Zephyros vere tepente novos : 
Induiturque brevem Tellus reparata juventam; 

Jamque soluta gelu dulce virescit humus. 
Fallor? an et nobis redeunt in carmina vires j 

Ingeniumque mihi munere veris adest ? 
Munere veris adest ; iterumque vigescit ab illoj 

(Quis putet?) atque aliquod jam sibi poscit opns. 
Castalis ante oculos, bifidumque cacumen oberratj 

Et mihi Pyrenen somnia nocte ferunt : 
Concitaque arcano fervent mihi pectora motuj 

Et furor, et sonitus me sacer intus agit. 
Delius ipse venit: video Peneide lauro 

Implicitos crines: — Delius ipse venit. 
Jam mihi mens liquidi raptatur in ardua coeli j 

Perque vagas nubes corpore liber eo. 
Perque umbras, perque antra feror penetralia vatum, 

Et mihi fana patent interiora Deum : 
Intuiturque animus toto quid agatur Olympo j 

Nee fugiunt oculos Tartara caeca meos. 
Quid tarn grande sonat distento spiritus ore? 

Quid parit haec rabies ? quid sacer iste furor ? 
Ver mihi quod dedit ingenium, cantabitur illo: 

Profuerint isto reddita dona modo. 
Jam, Philomela, tuos foliis adoperta novellis 

Instituis modulos dum silet omne nemus, 



542 LIFE OF MILTON. 

poised against that of the author's confidential 

Urbe ego, tu silva simul incipiamus utrique; 

Et simul adventum veris uterque canat. 
Veris, io ! rediere vices : celebremus honores 

Veris, et hoc subeat Musa perennis opus. 

ON THE ARRIVAL OF SPRING. 

Now Time brings back on ever circling wing 

Young Zephyrs, soft companions of the Spring : 

And Earth revived in transient verdure glows, 

"Wooed by their whispers, and forgets her snows, 

Am I deceived with kindred warmth imprest? 

Or does new genius swell within my breast? 

Yes ! 'tis Spring's bounty that now prompts my tongue 

To ask a subject worthy of my song. 

Entranced in strange delight I wander o'er 

The sacred regions of poetic lore, 

Castalia's spring, Parnassus' forked height ; 

My daily vision, and my dream by night. 

Some rage divine my laboring bosom fires : 

Some inward voice with thrilling notes inspires. 

He comes ! great Phoebus comes! I see from far 

The floating radiance of his laurell'd hair. 

My mind exulting spurns its mortal clayj 

And springs aloft to seek the realms of day; 

To drink the new-born beam; — with wondering glance 

To range the azure waste and starry dance. 

O'er cavern'd rocks, Religion's pale abode, 

And fanes, still murmuring with the inspiring God, 

Amazed she roams, and looks all nature through ; 

And heaven and hell bide nothing from her view. 

But what portends this swell? this rage divine? 

This ardent soul which burns along my line ? 

My grateful verse shall praise the bounteous Spring, 

Who waked my breast and taught me how to sing. 

Now Philomel essays her plaintive throat, 

While raptured Silence listens to the note. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 543 

pupil and nephew, the latter must be consi- 
dered as too weak and uncertain to be in- 
titled to any great regard. 

When he celebrates the inspiration of 
spring, Milton seems to be only following 
the example of his poetic predecessors, and 
to be writing with the taste of a classic ra- 
ther than from his experience as a man. 
This season, when nature starts from her 
slumber and appears to exult in a species of 
new life, has always supplied the Muse with 
a favourite topic of description and pane- 
gyric. Even in our northern climate, this 
prime of the year has sufficient charms to 
allure the susceptible imagination of the 
poet; but under the glowing skies of Greece 
and Italy it is accompanied with so many 
striking and fascinating beauties as to be pos- 
sessed of irresistible attraction. We are not 
therefore surprised when we see it in the classic 
page displayed with so much delightful ima- 
gery, and find its vivifying efficacy extended 
from the vegetable and the animal races to 
the intellectual and imperial dynasty of man. 

In praise of Spring, sweet oird! you charm the plains: 
In praise of Spring I tune my civic strains. — 
The blushing year in triumph comes along! 
Haste! haste! to pay the tributary soug. 

Charles Symmons, jun. 



544 LIFE OF MILTON. 

By man indeed subsisting in an abso- 
lute state of nature, if we can imagine him 
in such a state, its influence would pro- 
bably be very sensibly felt; and the same 
genial virtue, which awakens the music of 
the woods and kindles the desires of the field, 
would excite, as it is likely, the torpid in- 
stincts and faculties of the human savage. 
On artificial man however, withdrawn as 
he is from nature by institution and by habit, 
we do not believe that the seasons, otherwise 
than as they may incidentally affect the 
health, can be productive of the slightest con- 
sequence. With respect to his body, we are 
not sensible of any change which they effect, 
and it is inconceivable that they can come 
into contact with the mind through any other 
medium than that of his corporeal organs. 
The complete independence of the human 
intellect, on the vicissitude of the seasons 
and the varying aspect of the external world, 
seems to be fully established by the expe- 
rience of mankind, which has assured us that 
the imagination has taken her loftiest flights, 
and has painted her most brilliant scenery in 
the close retirement of the writer's study, when 
substituted light and heat have supplied the 
absence or the deficiency of the sun. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 545 

We are satisfied therefore that the infor- 
mation y/hich Toland followed was erro- 
neous, and we have only to consider with 
what limitation we shall receive the account 
given by Milton himself, as it is communi- 
cated to us by his biographer and kinsman, 
Philips. 

That Milton's poetic power was subject 
to those inequalities of flow, to which the 
human fancy in its strongest or its weakest 
existence is inevitably liable, cannot for an 
instant be doubted. Like every man, who 
has ever solicited this faculty of the mind, the 
author of Paradise Lost would find it some- 
times disobedient to his call, and sometimes 
preventing it. Labour would often be inef- 
fectual to obtain what often would be gra- 
tuitously offered to him ; and his imagina- 
tion, which at one instant would refuse a 
flower to his most strenuous cultivation, would 
at another shoot up into spontaneous and 
abundant vegetation. In the intercourse with 
the fancy this has been uniformly experienced ; 
and, without the information supplied by 
Richardson, we should have concluded that 
with Milton some days would elapse undis- 
tinguished by a verse, while on others the 
great poet would dictate thirty or forty lines 
under the impulse, as it were, of instant in- 

2 N" 



546 LIFE OF MILTON. 

spiration. This must be admitted therefore 
not only as credible, but as certain; and, 
proceeding a step farther, we may reason- 
ably suppose that, during the augmented 
heats of summer, in the close streets and 
under the oppressive atmosphere of a large 
city, these luminous moments would occur 
more rarely and would glow with less effi- 
cacious splendour. 

Of the summer season then, during which 
he was so seldom sensible of the sparkling- 
influences of fancy, he might be allowed to 
speak as of a period in which " his vein never 
flowed happily:" though we cannot believe 
that for the whole interval between the vernal 
and the autumnal equinox his power of 
poetic composition was suspended and his 
work absolutely at rest. Even if his fancy 
were inert, his judgment would still be in 
action; and when no part of the finishing 
could be happily executed, the subject might 
be revolved and the plan digested. In the 
least brilliant instant the canvass might be 
prepared to receive the future births of the 
pencil. 

Richardson, who records with affectionate 
reverence the minutest circumstance which 
he could discover respecting the object of 
his biography, relates that the author of 



LIFE OF MILTON. 54? 

the Paradise Lost, when he composed and 
dictated in the day, was accustomed " to sit, 
leaning backward, in an easy chair, with his 
leg flung over the elbow of it:" that he fre- 
quently composed in the night/ when his 
unpremeditated verse would sometimes flow 
in a torrent, under the impulse as it were of 8 
some strange poetical fury; and that in these 
peculiar moments of imagination his ama- 
nuensis, who was generally his daughter, w^as 

f The account given by his widow (see note p. 506) agrees 
with this of Richardson's, respecting the circumstance of Mil- 
ton's composing in the night, and dictating a number of lines in 
continuity. 

Observing on what is here related by Richardson, Dr. John- 
son says, " That in this intellectual hour Milton called for his 
daughter to secure what came, may be questioned ; for un- 
luckily it happens to be known that his daughters were never 
taught to write." 

It is unfortunate for Dr. J. that we have Aubrey's authority 
in opposition to his. Aubrey, who possessed in this instance 
every mean of the most authentic information, expressly tells 
us that Milton's youngest daughter was his amanuensis. This 
Dr. J. must have known : but, though truth was dear to him, 
the depreciation of Milton was still dearer. When he passed 
without notice the information given on this subject by Au- 
brey, the Doctor availed himself of the very doubtful testimony 
of Mrs. Foster. 

s " With a certain Impetus and CEstro" are the words of 
Richardson 5 whose language is too quaint, and frequently too in- 
correct to be admitted without some modification into any neat 
page. Of the two Latin words, which in this passage he has 
rather inaccurately connected with " flowed," one is mispelt: 
CEstrum being written by him iEstrum. 



548 LIFE OF MILTON". 

summoned by the bell to arrest the verses as 
they came and to commit them to the secu- 
rity of writing. 

During the supposed inattention of the 
public to the merits of his poem, Milton has 
been represented as reposing in the conscious 
dignity of worth, and appealing without emo- 
tion from the injustice of his contemporaries 
to the impartial award of posterity. The 
magnanimity of Milton, which had been 
ascertained on a variety of occasions, would 
not, as we are confident, have deserted him 
under this species of trial. In this instance 
however its exertion was not demanded; for 
the fortune of his work was such as to pre- 
serve him from the shock of disappointment, 
if not to elevate him with the transport of suc- 
cess. The applauses of the few, whose judg- 
ment he most valued, seem to have been 
sufficiently warm and unanimous to assure 
him that he had fully accomplished his ob- 
ject; and might patiently await that louder 
plaudit which could not finally be withheld. 

We are ignorant of the precise time when 
the celebrated epigram of Dry den was writ- 
ten: but the encomiastic verses of Andrew 
Marvell, and of Barrow the physician were 
prefixed to the second edition of the Para- 
dise Lost, and were probably composed soon 



LIFE OF 'MILTON. 549 

after its first publication. To Lord Buck- 
hurst, who subsequently became Earl of 
Dorset, is ascribed the honour of introducing 
it to general notice; for accidentally meet- 
ing with it in Little Britain, where he was 
in the pursuit of rare books, and being struck 
with some of its passages, he immediately 
purchased and sent it to Dryden, with a re- 
quest for his opinion. Dryden's answer dis- 
covered the strong feeling of one great poetic 
mind excited by the exhibition of another. 
" This man cuts us all out, and the ancients 
too:" h and soon afterward, as Aubrey in- 
forms us, the Laureat called upon Milton, 
and solicited his permission to construct a 
drama upon his epic; a permission which 
the old bard readily gave, declaring that he 
had no objection to the scheme u of tagging 
his lines/' In the preface to this drama, or, 
to speak with more precision, to this opera, 
called " The State of Innocence and the Fall 
of Man," which was not published during 
Milton's life, Dryden is sufficiently liberal 

h This anecdote, which is related by Richardson on authority 
not easily to be questioned, has lately been discredited by Mr. 
Malone, in his Life of Dryden, [p. 113, 114.] But the argu- 
ments adduced on this topic by Mr. M. are in themselves very 
weak, and of no power against the testimony which they are 
brought to overthrow. From the reply of Dryden in this in- 
stance no inference can be drawn against his previous acquaint- 



550 LIFE OF MILTON. 

in his acknowledgments to the majestic and 
venerable poet, with whose materials he had 

ance with the Paradise Lost and its author. Dryden might have 
been intimate with this great Epic from its first embryon existence, 
or with Milton from his cradle, and yet have said, " This man 
cuts us all out, and the ancients too 5" and what is imputed to 
the bookseller, as spoken by him on this occasion to the noble 
peer, is by no means inconsistent with the fact as it is established, 
of the general sale of the Paradise Lost: for the bookseller 
only tells Lord Buckhurst that " they," the copies of the poem 
which were in his shop, n lay on his hands as waste paper." 
There happened, as it seems, to be no sale for the Paradise Lost 
in the neighbourhood of Little Britain, and the twenty or thirty 
or fifty copies perhaps which this bookseller had purchased, (and 
these copies by the bye would be reckoned by the publisher among 
the thirteen hundred which had passed off his hands, though not, as 
this account demonstrates, into circulation,) still remained unsold, 
I am sorry to remark that in the present instance Mr. Malone has 
not observed his usual accuracy of statement ; for in his citation 
from Richardson he has been guilty, inadvertently as I make no 
doubt, of a very egregious mistake. The words of Richardson are, 
i( for they lay on his hands as waste paper:" but Mr. Malone has 
changed " they" for a word of more specific import, and made 
the bookseller say " the impression lay on his hands as waste 
paper." On this misquotation, corrected, or rather still more 
perverted into " almost the whole impression" Mr. Malone founds 
the whole strength of his pretended refutation. The other anec- 
dote recorded by Richardson, of Sir John Denham's having 
brought into the House of Commons a leaf of the Paradise Lost 
from the press and made it the subject of his high eulogy, I have 
forborne to insert in my page. But, though the arguments ad- 
vanced, in the first instance by Dr. Johnson and since by Mr. 
Malone, against the probability of this asserted fact are rather 
more specious than those which I have been considering, still are 
they far from being convincing or of a nature to be opposed to the 
evidence of Sir George Hungerford, who reports what he saw and 
what he heard. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 551 

constructed his own beautiful, but very un- 
equal edifice. 

Minutely to trace all the subsequent for- 
tunes of the Paradise Lost, through its va- 
rious editions and translations, till it became 
fully established in its proper rank as a Bri- 
tish classic and the pride of modern Eu- 
rope, 1 would probably rather fatigue than be 
amusing to my readers. I will only there- 
fore observe that Milton lived to obtain 
the whole fifteen pounds for which he had 
conditionally stipulated, that his widow sold k 
for eight pounds the copy-right of the work 
which he had bequeathed to her; and that 

1 Notwithstanding the strange specimen of French criticism, 
which we have lately noticed, (p. 535 in the note), the fame of 
the Paradise Lost seems to be extending in France. A version 
of it, with a life of its author, abridged principally from that by 
Mr. Hayley, has been published at Paris by a M. Monneron, a 
member of the Legislative Body : and, what is of more conse- 
quence, a translation of our great epic has just been given to 
the world by L'Abbe Delille. Though this translation be much 
inferior to that of Virgil by the same elegant and spirited pen, 
and may not be altogether equal to the high fame of Delille, it 
contains many beautiful passages; and, though made, as it would 
appear, without a sufficient intimacy with the language of the ori- 
ginal, it exhibits on the whole to the French reader a very fine 
poem. But of all the great poets Milton is perhaps the most dif- 
ficult to be brought under the yoke of French prosody; and, 
happily adapted as it is to the common intercourse of society, the 
French must be allowed by its greatest admirers not to be the 
language of the more sublime Muse. 

k On the 21st of December, 1680, as appears by her receipt. 



552 LIFE OF MILTON. 

Samuel Simmons, who in this instance also 
was the purchaser, disposed of what was thus 
wholly transferred to him, for twenty-five 
pounds, to Brabazon Aylmer the bookseller; 
from whom it passed, at a considerable ad- 
vance of price, to old Jacob Tonson. The 
thirteenth edition of this poem, in 1727, 
ought to be mentioned with distinction, as it 
was prefaced with a life of the author by the 
respectable Elijah Fenton, who was at once 
a scholar, a poet, and a man of worth. 1 

In 1670 Milton published his history of 
England, a work of which our notices have 
already been sufficiently ample. In. the fol- 
lowing year he sent into the world the Pa- 
radise Regained and the Samson Agonistes, m 
poems of unequal merit, which require us to 
pause in the narrative for the purpose of 
making them the subjects of our transient 
observation. 

1 In 1786 a gentleman, possessing the first edition of Para- 
dise Lost, communicated to the public, through the channel of 
the Gentleman's Magazine, some lines on Day-break, written, 
as he said, in a female hand on the two first leaves attached to 
the title page of the volume, and subscribed — " Dictated by 
J. M." — This testimony, united with that which is supplied by 
the verses themselves, will not suffer us to doubt of their being 
a production of our author's. They may be found in Mr. Todd's 
Life of Milton, p. cxx. of the 1st ed. or p. 118 of the 2d. 

™ They had been licensed in the preceding year on the 2d of 
July. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 553 

That considerable disappointment was felt 
on the first appearance of the Paradise Re- 
gained, and that the author's sensibility" was 
hurt by the very inferior rank assigned to this 
with reference to his former poem, are facts 
which are very generally known. The Para- 
dise Regained possessed no charms for the 
multitude; and it seems to have fallen imme- 
diately into that state of disregard from which 
it has not had the power or the good fortune 
to emerge. Struck indeed with the beauties 
which occur in it, with the weight of senti- 
ment and the knowledge which it every where 
displays, some superior men have endea- 
voured to conciliate the public regard in its 
favour, and even to assert for it the higher 
honours of heroic song. Jortin, whose re- 
marks uniformly bear testimony to the pecu- 
liar rectitude of his mind, speaks of it in 
terms of just and appropriate praise; and 
Warburton, who with all the science and the 
acuteness, wanted the fine and sensitive per- 
ception of an accomplished critic, extrava- 
gantly pronounces it to be " a charming 

n Milton certainly did not prefer the " Paradise Regained," 
but '• he could not hear with patience" (these are Philips's 
words) the former " censured to be much inferior" to the latter. 
This surely is sufficient proof of the incompetency of an author 
to decide on the relative merits of his own works; and requires 
no aggravation from any mistatement of the fact. 



554 



LIFE OF MILTON, 



poem, nothing inferior in the poetry and the 
sentiments to the Paradise Lost/' 

The opinion however of these great men 
seems to have been without influence on that 
of the public ; and a very able and laboured 
attempt in the present day, to lift into po- 
pularity this second birth of Milton's epic 
muse, has terminated equally in failure. 

In 1796 an edition of this poem was pub- 
lished by Mr. Dunster; in whom unquestion- 
ably are united the leading requisites of a cri- 
tic, extensive reading with an acute and dis- 
criminating intellect. Combining the zeal 
of an editor with the ingenuity of an advo- 
cate, he has not only ascertained with preci- 
sion the genuine beauties of the Paradise Re- 
gained, but, having first persuaded himself, 
he is solicitous to persuade us to discover 
charms in its blemishes, and fecundity in its 
dearth. In the judgment of this critic, the 
absence of poetic imagery and of poetic num- 
bers, in the Paradise Regained, results from 
the profundity of taste and the most refined 
artifice; is a chaste reserve of ornament, a 
learned style of writing, to be relished indeed 
only by the few, but by the favoured and 
initiated few to be acknowledged as the pride 
of composition and the last happy effect of 
consummate and victorious art. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 555 

If my plan would admit of any parti- 
cular discussion of this editor's opinions and 
remarks, it would be easy, as I conceive, to 
convict them of essential and radical error: 
but to account for their ill success with the 
public, no minute or subtle disquisition will 
be necessary. 

The first purpose of poetry is to please, and 
that poem which does not obviously please, 
which does not flatter the ear and make its 
immediate appeal to the imagination or 
the heart, has imperfectly accomplished its 
design, and must not hope for any extensive 
controll over the popular mind. In a com- 
position, in which the charm and fascination 
proper to poetry are generally prevalent, 
criticism may explain the causes of those 
effects which are delightful to us, and may 
establish or extend the fame of the author: 
but to a poem, of which the beauties are so 
coy and retreating as to require to be anxi- 
ously sought and forcibly dragged into light, 
the services which the friendliness of criti- 
cism can render are very unimportant. It is 
in vain to tell us that we ought to be, if w r e 
are not pleased ; and, if our understandings 
can be brought into subjection by the critic, 
our fancies revolting from his authority will 
assert their freedom, and, turning from the 



556 



LIFE OF MILTON 



object of subtle and laboured panegyric, will 
seek their peculiar luxuries wherever they 
may be found. 

On the fate of the Paradise Regained 
the voice of the public, which on a question 
of poetic excellence cannot for any long time 
be erroneous, has irrevocably decided. Not 
to object to the impropriety of the title, 
which would certainly be more consistent 
with a work on the death and the resurrec- 
tion of our blessed Lord, the extreme nar- 
rowness of the plan of the poem, the small 
proportion of it which is assigned to action 
and the large part which is given to disputa- 
tions and didactic dialogue, its paucity of 
characters and of poetic imagery, and, lastly, 
its general deficiency in the charm of num- 
bers must for ever preclude it from any ex- 
tended range of popularity. It may be liked 
and applauded by those who are resolute to 
like and are hardy to applaud : but to the 
great body of the readers of poetry, let the 
critics amuse themselves with their exertions 
as they please, it will always be " caviare/' It 
is embellished however with several exqui- 
site passages, and it certainly shows, in some 
of its finer parts, the still existing author of 
the Paradise Lost. 

• Shakspeare, in Hamlet. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 557 

On the merits of the " Samson Agonistes" p 
there has fortunately been no important con- 
trariety of opinion. By the universal suf- 
frage it has been pronounced a manly, noble, 
and pathetic drama, the progeny of a mind 
equally exalted, sensitive and poetic. Its 
delineation of character, though not various, 
is discriminate and true; its sentiments are 
uniformly weighty and dignified; its diction 
is severe, exquisite, and sublime; and over 
the whole is thrown an awful and majestic 
gloom, which subdues at the same time that 
it elevates the imagination. 

With reference however either to its 
conduct or to its execution, it cannot be con- 
sidered as a faultless piece. On the subject 
of its conduct, I must concur with Dr. John- 

p AywviaTrjs (Agonistes) Certator, Qui certat gymnica cer- 
tamina, Athleta, Pugil. (Step. Thes.) A contender in those 
public games of Greece, which were peculiarly called Ay cm eg 
(Agones); and given with admirable propriety to Samson, as the 
hero of this drama, the catastrophe of which results from the ex- 
hibition of his strength in the public games of the Philistines. 
It is strange that this most obvious meaning of the title should 
have escaped Dr. Newton. " Samson Agonistes — that is," he 
says, u Samson an actor, Samson being represented in a play ! T 
Dr. N. has perversely adopted the second, and least strictly pro- 
per sense assigned by Stephens to Ayoovurlri$—> that of histrio, 
actor scenicus. This is admitted without any remark or correc- 
tion by Mr. Todd into his first edition of Milton's Poet. Works : 
but in his second, (published more than two years after this note 
had appeared,) he produces a note by Mr. Dunster, in which the 
error of Dr. N. is noticed and rectified. 



558 



LIFE OF MILTON 



son in thinking that it is destitute of a just 
poetic middle; — that the action of the drama 
is suspended during some of its intermediate 
scenes, which might be amputated without 
any injury to the fable. In the inferior de- 
partment of execution, the author seems 
to have been betrayed into error by his de- 
sire of imitating the choral measures of ths 
Greeks. He perceived that the masters of 
the Grecian theatre united in their choruses 
verses of all descriptions, either without any 
rule, or without any which modern critics 
had been able to ascertain ; and his fine ear 
could not be insensible to the harmonious 
consequence of this apparently capricious 
association. He was hence unwarily induced 
to imagine that a like arbitrary junction of 
verses in his own language would be produc- 
tive of nearly a like effect; and, without per- 
haps reflecting on the rich variety of the 
Greek metres, or on the genius of the Eng- 
lish language and the habits of the English 
ear, he threw together in the choral parts of 
his drama a disorderly rabble of lines of all 
lengths, some of which are destitute of 
rhythm, and the rest modifications only of 
the iambic. The result, as might be expected, 
has been far from happy; and the chorus, 
instead of giving to his piece the charm of 



LIFE OF MILTON. 559 

varied harmony, has injured and deformed it 
with jarring and broken numbers. 

By the Grecian dramatists the chorus 
was admitted not on choice but from com- 
pulsion. It was the root from which the 
drama incidentally sprang; and, preceding 
the dialogue, continued for some time after 
the sprouting of that engrafted and alien 
branch to form the chief part of the piece. 
When the dialogue was advanced by iEschy- 
lus to the prime honours of the scene, the 
chorus, which could not be wholly expelled 
from a stage of which it was the first occu- 
pant and proprietor, was skilfully employed 
to entertain with variety, to relieve the atten- 
tion with musical modulation, and to serve 
as a vehicle of pure poetry on which the 
Muse might ascend to her most lofty and 
adventurous elevation. Though in some re- 
spects therefore an incumbrance on the dra- 
matist, the chorus was thus compelled to 
yield him a compensation in that display of 
his own powers which it admitted, and in 
that diversity of pleasure with which it en- 
abled him to gratify his audience. The Greek 
drama was certainly in a state of wide sepa- 
ration from nature; but no poetic reader 
would wish the intervening distance to be 
lessened by the abolition of its chorus, from 
which his fancy and his ear derive so much 



560 LIFE OF MILTON. 

exquisite delight. That the chorus is capa- 
ble of effects almost equally advantageous 
upon the English stage, has been fully proved 
by the Caractacus of Mr. Mason: but in the 
Samson Agonistes, in consequence of the er- 
roneous taste with which it has been con- 
structed, it must be allowed egregiously to 
have failed. 

The year, succeeding the publication of 
this grand and solemn poem, witnessed a se- 
cond instance of the literary condescension 
of Milton. We have already noticed the 
Latin accidence which he published for the 
use of children; and he now, in ID? 2, sup- 
plied the young but more advanced student 
with a scheme of logic, digested on the plan 
of Ramus, or, in its Latin title, " Artis logicae 
plenior institutio ad Petri Rami methodum 
concinnata." 

In this book, it has been suggested as 
doubtful whether' 3 " he did not intend an 
act of hostility against the Universities: for 
Ramus was one of the first oppugners of the 
old philosophy, who disturbed with innova- 
tions the quiet of the schools." It is proba- 
ble indeed that, as he advanced in life, Mil- 
ton did not contract more fondness than he 
had formerly entertained for the modes of 
education adopted by these venerable guar- 

* Johnson's Life of Milton. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 56l 

dians of literature: but the eye which can 
assume to trace this hostility in the work now 
before us must be at least as presumptuous 
as it is malignant. 

Without any reference to the rebellion of 
his philosophy, there was much in the his- 
tory of Ramus to conciliate the affection 
of Milton. De la Ram6e, or Ramus, had 
emerged from a low station of life, (for his 
father was a peasant,) by the force of intel- 
lectual industry and the powerful efficiency 
of character. By the publication of some 
attacks r on the inviolable supremacy of Aris- 
totle, he threw the university of Paris into 
disorder, and exposed himself, as a kind of 
confessor in the cause of philosophic free- 
dom, to the persecuting enmity of the old zea- 
lots of the school. The consequences of their 
intolerance compelled him to take refuge 
among the Huguenots; and he closed, in the 
memorable massacre at Paris on the fatal 
eve of St. Bartholomew, a life as remarkable 
for its learned labour as it was for the vicis- 
situde of its fortunes. If any circumstances 
therefore in the personal history of Ramus 
can be supposed to have influenced Miltori 
to select him for a guide in any province 

r His Institutiones dialecticae ; and his Aristotelicae animad- 
versiones. 

2 O 



562 



LIFE OF MILTON. 



of literature, the probity, the fortitude, the 
perseverance, and the misfortunes of the 
man may fairly be admitted as the causes 
of the partiality, in preference to his reso- 
lute, or, as some may style it, his factious op- 
position to systems made venerable by the 
hoariness of time. 

The ardour of composition in Milton was 
not extinguished by the damp of age. In 
1673 by publishing a short treatise entitled, 
" Of true Religion, Heresy, Schism,Toleration, 
&c." he showed that the great interests of 
man were uniformly the leading objects of 
his regard. In this piece he strongly incul- 
cates the duty of mutual forbearance and of 
union among those Christians of every deno- 
mination who appeal to the holy scriptures 
for the rule of their faith; and he would ex- 
clude from his scheme of ample toleration 
the church of Rome alone, whose idolatry 
was an offence to the Christian name, and 
whose tenets were as incompatible with the 
safety of any government as they were with 
the existence of any body of dissentient 
Christians. s 

8 These are Milton's sentiments, not mine; and in his time 
they were justified by the still formidable and menacing aspect of 
the Papal hierarchy. Though deprived of much of its ancient 
power and with its capacity of mischief very considerably nar- 
rowed, the Church of Rome, with an opulent and splendid court, 



LIFE OF MILTON. 563 

" Let us now inquire/' he says, " whether 
popery be tolerable or no. Popery is a dou- 
ble thing to deal with, and claims a two- 
fold power, ecclesiastical and political, both 
usurped, and the one supporting the other. 

But ecclesiastical is ever pretended to 
political. The pope by this mixt faculty pre- 
tends right to kingdoms and states, and espe- 
cially to this of England, thrones and un- 
thrones kings, and absolves the people from 
their obedience to them; sometimes inter- 
dicts to whole nations the public worship of 
God, shutting up their churches; and was 
wont to drain away the greatest part of the 
wealth of this then miserable land, as part of 
his patrimony, to maintain the pride and 
luxury of his court and prelates; and now 

and with two thirds of the population of Christian Europe under its 
banners, continued in the 17th century to be an object of reason- 
able terror. In the 17th century, it could still hope for the reco- 
very of its lost dominion : and if it could not overturn thrones and 
distress nations by its excommunications and interdicts, it could 
disturb establishments and throw communities into disorder by 
its machinations and intrigues In our days the state of things is 
happily quite changed : the conclave of the Vatican is overturned 
from its foundations; the Pope is shrunk into a bishop of the French 
empire, and the Catholics are now only a sect of Christians, who 
profess some articles of belief not in harmony with our's, but who 
are without the means, if we can suppose them to retain the desire 
of injuring us, and against whom the principle of self-defence will 
no longer support us in any measure of oppressive or discriminating 
policy. The offence of their idolatry indeed remains: but this 
cannot be a just object of legislative vengeance- or precaution. 



564 



LIFE OF MILTON. 



since, through the infinite mercy and favour 
of God, we have shaken off his Babylonish 
yoke, hath not ceased by his spies and agents, 
bulls and emissaries, at once to destroy both 
king and parliament; perpetually to seduce, 
corrupt, and pervert as many as they can of 
the people. Whether therefore it be fit or 
reasonable to tolerate men, thus principled in 
religion toward the state, I submit it to the 
consideration of all magistrates, who are best 
able to provide for their own and the pub- 
lic safety. As for tolerating the exercise of 
their religion, supposing their state-activities 
not to be dangerous, I answer, that toleration 
is either public or private; and the exercise 
of their religion, as far as it is idolatrous, 
can be tolerated neither way: not publicly 
without, grievous and insufferable scandal 
given to all conscientious beholders; not pri- 
vately, without great offence to God, de- 
clared against all kind of idolatry, though 
secret/' t 

But even toward Papists he would not 
exercise any personal severity. " Are we to 
punish them," he asks, " by corporal punish- 
ments, or fines in their estates on account of 
their religion? I suppose it stands not with 
the clemency of the Gospel, more than what 
appertains to the security of the state/ 

tp.W. it. 264. u lb. 265. 



>» u 



LIFE OF MILTON. 565 

The author's chief purpose in this publi- 
cation was to check the growth of poperj 7 , 
at this juncture particularly and alarmingly ra- 
pid in consequence of the avowed patronage 
of the Duke of York and the secret counte- 
nance of the king. The danger, which at 
this instant awakened the fears of Milton, 
became not long afterward so palpable and 
striking as to excite the nation, united in one 
great effort for its safety, to depose the ca- 
tholic bigot who occupied and abused the 
throne. 

In the same year our author published a 
second edition of his youthful poems, in one 
volume with his " Tractate on Education," 
and included in it some small pieces, not 
comprehended in the edition of 1645. On 
this occasion however the sonnets to Fair- 
fax, to Vane, and to Cromwell, with the se- 
cond to Cyriac Skinner, were for some unex- 
plained reason omitted, and were first given 
to the world, as we have before mentioned, 
by Philips in his life of his uncle. 

In 1674, in which year he was destined 
to complete his laborious and honourable 
course, Milton published his familiar letters 
and some of his university exercises; the 
former with the title of '/ Epistolarum Fa- 
miliarium Liber unus," and the latter with 
that of " Prolusiones qusedam oratoriae in 



566 LITE OF MILTON. 

Collegio Christi habitae." These letter, of 
which we have offered to our readers more 
than one specimen and which are addressed 
principally to foreigners of literary eminence, 
are possessed of peculiar interest, and con- 
tain, as (Morhoff justly remarks,) many cha- 
racters of ancient and modern, of foreign 
and domestic authors which are worthy to 
be read and understood. His college exer- 
cises are valuable chiefty for their exhibition 
of early power and proficiency. 

The next exercise of his pen, as it is af- 
firmed, was to translate into English the de- 
claration of the Poles, on their elevating the 
heroic John Sobieski to their elective throne: 
but I must profess myself to be doubtful of 
the fact. 8 It is more certain that in some 
part of the same year he wrote " A Brief 
History of Muscovy," which was published 
at a period of about eight years posterior to 
his death. 

With this work terminated his literary 
labours,* for the gout, which had for many 

s The Latin document could arrive in England only a very 
short time before Milton's death, and the translation bears no 
resemblance to his character of composition. These circum- 
stances induce me to express a doubt where none of Milton's 
preceding biographers, as far at least as I know, have inti- 
mated any. 

* An answer to a libel on himself, and a system of Theology 
called, according to Wood, te Idea Theologian/' are compositions 
of Milton's which have been lost. The last was at one time in 



LIFE OF MILTON. 567 

years afflicted him, was now appointed to 
terminate his exemplary life. He was sum- 
moned to his final account, for which no one 
of his species perhaps had ever been better 
prepared, on the u eighth of November,(l674), 
when he expired without pain, and so quietly 
that they who waited in his chamber were 
unconscious of the moment of his departure. 
" The funeral was attended/' as Toland in- 
forms us, " by all the authors learned and 
great friends in London, not without a friendly 
concourse of the vulgar;" and his body was 
deposited, by the side of his father's, in the 
upper part of the chancel of St. Giles', Crip- 
plegate. 

In consequence of an alteration made in 
that part of the church, the stone, inscribed 
on this occasion with his name, was removed 
in the course of not many years, and was 
never replaced. But this unintended injury 

the hands of Cyriac Skinner, but what became of it afterwards 
has not been traced. Another work of our author's is men- 
tioned by Mr. Todd. It is entitled "An Argument or Debate 
in Law of the great Question concerning the Militia, as it is 
now settled by Ordinance of Parliament, by J. M. (London 
1642.)" In the copy of this work, which Mr. Todd saw in the 
collection of the late Duke of Bridgewater, the second Earl of 
Bridgewater, who had acted the elder Brother in Comus, has 
written the name of Milton as the author. 

n Wood says, on the ninth or the tenth. The day of Mil- 
ton's burial is ascertained, by the parish register, to have been 
the twelfth. 



568 



LIFE OF MILTON 



has in our days been amply compensated 
by the erection, in the same church, of a 
marble bust of the great poet, by the hand 
of Bacon and x the liberality of the late Mr. 
Whi thread. The honourable example had 
been given by Mr. Benson, one of the Audi- 
tors of the Imprest, who in 1737 introduced 

x In 1793. The late Mr. Whitbread was a man whose vir- 
tues reflected honour on his species. I have been informed by 
a gentleman, whose opportunities of knowing the fact and whose 
high integrity of character render his authority unquestionable, 
that the charities, which this excellent man distributed with 
silent and sagacious beneficence, amounted annually to no less 
a sum than 10,OCOl. ! — happy with the means of such extended 
good, and still happier with the heart to employ them. His 
virtues seem to have descended, with undiminished force and 
lustre, to his son, the present representative in parliament of 
the town of Bedford. 

" When the inscription," says Dr. Johnson, in his biogra- 
phical libel on Milton, " for the monument of Philips, in which 
he was said to be soli Miltono secundus, was exhibited to Dr. 
Sprat then dean of Westminster, he refused to admit it; the name 
of Milton was in his opinion too detestable to be read on the 
wall of a building dedicated to devotion. Atterbury, who suc- 
ceeded him, being author of the inscription, permitted its recep- 
tion." I know of no other testimony for the fact in question 
but this of Dr. Johnson. If it be authentic, it is of a nature 
to cover the name of Sprat with eternal dishonour. The reason 
is not less unhappy than the act, which it is brought to justify, 
was brutal. From the repository of regal and of prelatical ashes, 
the name of the republican and the puritan Milton might con- 
sistently be excluded: but it is strange that the name of one of 
the most religious of men, whose bosom from the opening to 
the close of his life glowed with the most pure and ardent devo- 
tion, should be regarded as ' ' too detestable to be read on the wall 
of a building dedicated to devction." 



LIFE OF MILTON. 569 

a similar memorial of Milton into Westmin- 
ster Abbey, to the walls of which venerable 
building his very name had been consi- 
dered, only a few years before, as a species 
of pollution. The lines/ which Dr. George, 
the provost of King's college, Cambridge, 
wrote for the inscription on this monument, 
are elegant and nervous: but the apology, 
which they intimate, could derive its pro- 
priety only from that illiberal and impotent 
malice which had previously been exerted 
against the name and memory of Milton. 2 

y Some of these verses I have inserted in my title-page, but 
I will here give them entire. They are by no means faultless, 
and they have certainly received their full share of praise. 

Augusti regum cineres, sanctaeque favillae 
Heroum! vosque O venerandi nominis umbrae! 
Parcite quod vestris infensum regibus olim 
Sedibus infertur nomen ; liceatque supremis 
Puneribus finire odia, et mors obruat iras. 
Nunc sub fcederibus coeant felicibus una 
Libertas et jus sacri inviolabile sceptri. 
Rege sub Augusto fas sit laudare Catonem. 

Ashes of regal and of holy fame, 
Forgive the intrusion of a hostile name! 
Cease human enmities with human life! 
And Death, the great composer, calm your strife ! 
Lo! now the king's and people's rights agree : 
In freedom's hand the hallow'd sceptre see ! 
No jealous fears alarm these happier days : 
And our Augustus smiles at Cato's praise. 

z In the August of 1/QO, the grave, as it was imagined, of the 
great poet was opened -, and his remains exposed for some time 
to the public view. The popular respect for Milton was on 



570 



LIFE OF MILTON, 



In the July preceding his decease, Milton 
had requested the attendance of his brother, 
Christopher, and in his presence had made a 
disposition of his property by a formal decla- 
ration of his will. This mode of testament, 
which is called nuncupative and under cer- 
tain precise regulations is admitted by the 
ecclesiastical courts, was in the present in- 
stance ineffectual. After a full hearing of 
the cause, on a suit instituted against it by 
the daughters, the nuncupative will of Mil- 
ton was found destitute of some of the essen- 
tial requisites for the establishment of its va- 
lidity; and was accordingly set aside by a 
decree of Sir Leoline Jenkins, the judge at 
that time of the Prerogative Court. This 
will gave the whole of the testator's actual 
possessions to his widow, assigning nothing 
to his daughters but their mother's marriage 
portion, which had not yet been paid, and 

this occasion discovered to be approaching to religious venera- 
tion. The people pressed from all quarters for a sight of the 
bones j and happy was the man who, availing himself of the 
mercenary spirit of the parish-officers, could become the pos- 
sessor of any portion of the sacred reliques. This profanation 
of the ashes of the illustrious dead was warmly resented by some 
of the writers of the day: but, much curiosity having been excited 
on the subject, the skeleton was subjected to a very accurate 
inspection, and proved to be that of a female. This fact, showing 
that the coffin of Milton was yet unviolated, relieved the unea- 
siness of his admirers, whose fondness for the man extended itself 
to the smallest piece of dead matter, which had once contributed 
to form his mortal residence. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 571 

the sums which he had expended on their 
education/' a The property, exclusive of the 
goods, which was thus bequeathed to the 
widow, is said to have been about fifteen 
hundred pounds. 

Disinterestedness and a contempt of mo- 
ney had uniformly distinguished the elevated 
mind of Milton. It is at least doubtful 
whether he received any pecuniary compen- 
sation from his pupils ; and of his small pa- 
trimony he is stated to have lost two thou- 
sand pounds by an injudicious confidence. 
Of an equal sum, which he had saved from 
the emoluments of his office and had placed 
on government security, he was deprived by 
the change of things at the Restoration; 
and his paternal house in Bread Street was 
consumed by the great fire of London in 
1666. But, with his few wants, it was diffi- 
cult to sink him into indigence; and after all 
his losses he was enabled, as we have seen, 
to leave nearly three thousand pounds, (in- 
cluding the 1000 1. still remaining in the 
hands of the Powells,) for the subsistence of 
his family. 

a In some of the depositions attached to his will, it is stated 
that he had frequently declared, " that he had made provision 
for his children in his life-time, and had spent the greatest part 
of his estate in providing for them." The depositions were 
made before Doctor (afterwards Sir William) Trumbull, who was 
Secretary of State and the friend of Pope. 



572 



LIFE OF MILTON. 



We are not told, and it would be idle to 
conjecture what sum was raised by the sale 
of his books; a measure which was taken pre- 
viously to his decease, and to which he was 
probably induced by the persuasion that his 
executrix would be less likely than himself to 
obtain their just value. In his days the pur- 
chasers of books were few, when compared 
with those in our's; and the number of the 
affluent, who expended large sums in literary 
curiosities, was still perhaps proportionably 
less. The sale in the present times of such a 
library, as Milton's may reasonably be sup- 
posed to have been, would alone produce a 
large part, if not the whole of the property 
which he bequeathed. Of this collection, 
an Euripides is now in the possession of Mr, 
Cradock, of Gumley in Leicestershire; and a 
Lycophron, (as Mr. Todd, on the authority 
of Mr. Walker, informs us,) is preserved in 
the library of the Earl of Charlemont. The 
margin of the Euripides is inscribed with 
many observations and corrections by Mil- 
ton's pen; among which Dr. Johnson, who 
was not deep in Grecian literature, affirms that 
he found nothing remarkable; but of which 
some have been adopted in Barnes's edition, 
and others inserted in Mr. Jodrell's illustra- 
trations of this Athenian dramatist. 

The concurring voices of all his early bio- 



LIFE OF MILTOE 1 . 573 

graphers, who were personally acquainted 
with him, will not allow us to doubt that the 
harmony of Milton's features and form seemed 
to make his body a suitable residence for his 
superior soul. b At Cambridge, the fineness 
of his complexion occasioned him to be 
called " the lady of Christ's college;" and the 
ruddiness, which lingered on his cheek till 
the middle of life, gave to him at that pe- 
riod an appearance of remarkable juvenility. 
His eyes were dark grey ; and their lustre, 
which was peculiarly vivid, did not fade even 
when their vision was extinguished. His 
hair, which was light brown, he wore parted 
at the top, and " clustering/' as he describes 
that of Adam, upon his shoulders. His per- 

b I borrow the expression and the thought from Aubrey. 
" His harraonical and ingenuous soul/' (says this biographer) 
dwelt in a beautiful and well-proportioned body." 

The personal beauty of Milton has given occasion to a little 
romantic story, which is pleasing to the imagination. As the 
youthful bard was asleep under a tree, an Italian lady, acci- 
dentally passing near the place, was struck with his charms, and 
alighted from her carriage to contemplate them. After grati- 
fying her curiosity and feeding her love with the spectacle, she 
dropped a paper, intimating the occurrence and professing her 
passion, and then, withdrawing without awaking him, she pro- 
ceeded on her journey. This event, as the story further relates, 
determined him to cross the Alps, for the purpose of discovering 
the fugitive fair one among the beauties of Italy. It is unneces 
sary to say that his search was unsuccessful : but in the voice and 
the charms of Leonora Baroni, he found an ample compensation 
for the loss of his imaginary mistress. 



/J74 LIFE OF MILTON. 

son was of the middle height, not fat or cor- 
pulent, but muscular and compact. " His 
deportment/' (I use the words of Wood, from 
whom nothing but a respect for truth could 
have extorted ai^ favourable account of his 
great contemporary,) " his deportment was 
affable, and his gait erect and manly, be- 
speaking courage and undauntedness." 

In his earlier life, he was fond of robust 
exercises; and, excelling in the management 
of the sword, he wanted neither strength nor 
resolution to repel the insults of any adver- 
sary, however eminent for his skill or his bo- 
dily force. When blindness, and the gout, 
with which he was early afflicted, confined 
him in a great degree to his house, he con- 
trived a swing for the purposes of exercise; 
and to exercise in one form or other, as the 
essential preservative of health, he regularly 
allotted one hour in the day. 

Having injured his constitution in his 
youth by night studies, whence immediately 
proceeded those pains in his head of which 
we have before spoken, and that weakness 
in his eyes which terminated in the loss of 

c Doctor Johnson thinks that Milton's weapon was not the 
rapier, but the broad sword. It was the weapon however, as 
Milton tells us himself, which he commonly carried by his side; 
and I suspect that gentlemen, who were not of the military pro- 
fession, very seldom, (if ever,) wore any weapon but the small 
sword. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 5J5 

sight, he corrected this erroneous practice as 
he advanced in years, and retired to his bed 
at the early hour of nine. The moments 
however which he gave to sleep in the be- 
ginning of the night, he took from the drowsy 
power in the morning, rising in summer ge- 
nerally at four o'clock and in winter at five. 
When, contrary to his usual custom, he in- 
dulged himself with longer rest, he employed 
a person to read to him from the time of his 
awaking to that of his rising. 

The opening of his day was uniformly 
consecrated to religion. A chapter of the 
Hebrew scriptures being read to him as soon 
as he was up, he passed the subsequent in- 
terval till seven o'clock in private meditation. 
From seven till twelve, he either listened 
while some author was read to him, or dic- 
tated as some friendly hand supplied him 
with its pen. At twelve commenced his 
hour of exercise, which before his blindness 
was commonly passed in walking, and after- 
ward for the most part in the swing. His 
early and frugal dinner succeeded; and when 
it was finished he resigned himself to the re- 
creation of music, d by which he found his 

d " In relation to his love of music," says Richardson, " and 
the effect it had upon his mind, I remember a story I had from 
a friend, I was happy in for many years 5 and who loved to 
talk of Milton, as he often did, Milton hearing a lady sing finely. 



576 LIFE OF MILTON. 

mind at once gratified and restored. Of 
music he was particularly fond, and both 
with its science and its practice he was more 
than superficially acquainted. He could com- 
pose, as Richardson says that it was reported ; 
and with his voice, which was delicately sweet 
and harmonious, 6 he would frequently accom- 
pany the instruments on which he played, 
the bass viol or the organ. His musical taste 
had, beyond question, been fostered by his 
father; and the great author's love of this de- 
lightful art is discovered in every part of his 
writings, where its intimation can in any way 
be made compatible with his subject. 

From his music he returned, with fresh 

' Now will I swear/ says he, ' this lady is handsome.' His ears 
were now eyes to him." Rich. Remarks on Milton, p. vi. 

In his Tractate on Education, as we have seen, Milton ad- 
vises for the students this recreation of music after meals, as 
peculiarly salutary to the mind : and it may be remarked that 
the same indulgence has been recommended by Sir William 
Jones from his own experience, as favourable to mental exer- 
tion, and producing the good effects without any of the disad- 
vantages of sleep. 

I feel gratified by any opportunity of bringing forward the 
name of the admirable Sir "William Jones ; whose life, like, 
that of Milton, was one continued and ardent struggle for the 
acquisition of knowledge; and who sought to advance all his 
species to that perfection, after which he himself was perpe- 
tually straining. 

e " He (Milton) had a delicate tuneable voice," says Wood, 
"- an excellent ear, could play on the organ," &c. Fast. Oxon. 
p. 626. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 5/7 

vigour, to the exercise of his intellect, to his 
books or his composition. At six he ad* 
mitted the visits of his friends: he took his 
abstemious supper at eight; and at nine, 
having smoked a pipe and drunk a glass of 
water, he retired, as we have before observed, 
to his repose. 

It is not pretended that this precise and 
uniform distribution of the day could at all 
times be maintained without interruption. 
When he was in office, many of his four and 
twenty hours were unquestionably engaged 
by, business; and, as a table was allowed to 
him by government for the entertainment of 
learned foreigners, the scheme of life which 
we have noticed could at this juncture have 
been very imperfectly followed. During the 
fourteen years, which intervened between his 
dismission from office and his death, the ar- 
rangement of his time would experience little 
disturbance; though his solitude was far from 
complete, and he was still followed by the 
attentions of the world. 

When he was in a great degree deserted 
by his thankless countrymen, he continued 
to be gratified with the notices of illustrious 
strangers; to whom, on their visits to our 
island, he still formed the principal object of 

2 p 



578 LIFE OF MILTON. 

curiosity and regard/ Under the usurpation 
of Cromwell, many had been allured from 
the continent by the sole wish of seeing the 
two extraordinary, but unequal and dissimilar 
characters who held, with so much ability 
and effect, the sceptre and the pen of Britain; 
and some, as Wood assures us, had visited 
with a feeling almost of religious veneration 
the house in Bread Street, which had been 
hallowed as it were by the birth of the re- 
nowned literary defender of the republic.* 5 

Of this great man the manners are uni- 
versally allowed to have been affable and 
graceful; the conversation, chearful, instruc- 
tive and engaging/ In his whole deporl- 

f Several of these visits of persons eminent for their talenti 

or their quality he is said to have received, as he was sitting 

before his door, in a grey coat of coarse cloth, in warm sultry 

weather to enjoy the fresh air: and Richardson, who relates this 

circumstance, proceeds to tell us,-— iC And very lately I had the 

good fortune to have another picture of him from an ancient 

clergyman in Dorsetshire, Dr. Wright. He found him in a 

small house, he thinks but one room on a floor : in that up one 

pair of stairs, which was hung with rusty green, he found John 

Milton, sitting in an elbow chair, black cloaths, and neat 

enough, pale but not cadaverous, his hands and fingers gouty, 

and with chalk stones. Among other discourse he expressed 

himself to this purpose, that was he free from the pain this gave 

him, his blindness would be tolerable." Richard. Remarks, 

&c. p. iv. 

« Fast. Oxon. p. 266. 

h His youngest daughter, Deborah, (Mrs. Clark,) when speak- 
ing of him, many years after his death, to the numerous in- 



LIFE OF MILTON. 5?9 

merit, however, there was visible a certain 
dignity of mind; and a something of con- 
scious superiority, which could not at all 
times be suppressed or wholly withdrawn 
from observation. His temper was grave, 
without any taint of melancholy; sanguine 
and bold in the conception of his purposes, 
impetuous yet persevering in their execu- 
tion. Ardent in kindness and vehement in 
resentment, he was inflexible only in the for- 

quirers whom his fame brought to her, affirmed that " he was 
delightful company ; the life of the conversation, not only on 
account of his flow of subject but of his unaffected cheerfulness 
and civility." * Francis Junius, the author of De Pictura Vete- 
rum, says, as we have already noticed, f that Milton, with whom 
he was intimate, was affable and polite ; and N. Heinsius mentions 
the general report of his being a man of a mild and courteous 
disposition. 

The whole passage which occurs in a letter of this great scho- 
lar's to his friend Gronovius, (dated from Leyden on the 14th of 
August 1051,) is worthy of insertion, as it speaks the general 
sentiment of the learned at that time in Europe respecting our 
great author. Ludimagistrum vocat (Salmasius, here called Scri- 
bonius,) passim Miltonum : qui tamen et nobili loco natus, et in 
re lauta constitutus, variis peregrinationibus, assiduisque studiis 
privatus aetatem, quam quadraginta annis grandiorem vix nume- 
rat, exegisse narratur : donee a consilio status Anglici ad scribae 
provinciam in isto collegio suscipiendam invitatus est. Virum esse 
miti comique ingenio aiunt, quique aliam non habuisse se causam 
profitetur Scribonium acerbe insectandi, quam quod ille et viros 
e maximis celeberrimisque multos nihil benignius exceperit, et 
quod in universam Anglorum gentem convitiis atrocissimis inju- 
rius valde fuerit. [Burm. Syll. iii. 276.] 

* Richard. Remarks, p. xxxvi. f P. 396. 



580 LIFE OF MILTON. 

mer; and his friendships were permanent 
while his enmities were transitory. Of the 
facility and the heartiness with which he 
could forgive, his conduct to the Powells ex- 
hibits a memorable instance; and no circum- 
stance of his life can be adduced to convict 
him of that severity and moroseness, of which 
he has been rashly or maliciously accused. 
The brutal ferocity of his political assailants 
offers a full justification of the means which he 
employed in his defence ; and if his weapons 
were more sharp or were wielded by a more 
vigorous arm, their's were aimed with all the 
deadliness and were infected with all the 
venom which their inferior powers could sup- 
ply. In a contest with the insolent Salma- 
sius, with the dastardly and scurrilous Du 
Moulin, the common war of polemics " seemed 
but a civil game f and the man who, involved 
in it, could content himself with the arms of 
the legitimate controversy of the present day, 
might well be regarded as not less ignorant 
of his opponents, than wanting to himself and 
to his cause. 

In his domestic intercourse, Milton has 
not been suspected of deficient tenderness to 
his wives: to his first his conduct seems at 
least to have been exempt from blame; to 
his two last to have been distinguished by 



LIFE OF MILTON. 581 

uniform kindness and affection. His sup- 
posed rigour to his daughters, which has al- 
ways been asserted on very defective or very 
questionable testimony, has of late been en- 
tirely disproved by the attestations attached 
to the nuncupative will of which we have 
already spoken. From the whole of the evi- 
dence, old and new, which is now before us, 
we know that 1 two of Milton's daughters were 
taught to read several languages, without un- 
derstanding what they were reading, for the 
purpose of being useful to him, and that one 
of them was frequently emplo3 r ed as his ama- 
nuensis; that, on their expressing their dislike 
of these occupations in the serviceof their blind 
father, he dispensed with their assistance, and, 
expending a large part of his moderate in- 
come on their education, 11 dismissed them 
to tasks better adapted to their inclinations 
and their sex; 1 that with peculiar inhumanity 

1 The eldest, Anne, was excused from reading on account of 
an imperfection in her speech. 

k tc Further this deponent saith, that she hath several times 
heard the said deceased, (John Milton,) since the time deposed, 
declare and say, that he had made provision for his children in 
his life-time, and had spent the greatest part of his estate in pro- 
viding for them, &c." (See* Nunc. Will of Milton, Appen. to 
Wartons 2d ed. of his Juvenile Poems, p. xxxvii.) 

1 The working of embroidery in gold and silver is specified 
on this occasion by Philips: — an art which, at that time, formed 
one of the chief employments of females of rank and fortune. 



582 LIFE OF MILTON. 

they neglected him in his blindness," 1 and were 
capable even of defrauding or robbing" him; 
that with all these provocations the injured 
father complained, it is true, of his children, 
but complained of them without passion; and 
seems never to have treated them with harsh- 
ness. After the intervention of many years, 
the youngest of these ladies, Mrs. Clarke, 
spoke of her father with great tenderness, 
and, on being shown a portrait which strongly 
resembled him, she exclaimed with trans- 
port, " Tis my father! 'tis my dear p father!" 
an expression of affectionate remembrance 
not likely to break from the lips of a child 
sensible of injuries, and irritated by causeless 
severity. She is reported indeed to have 
been her father's favourite; and she had not 
perhaps been so deep in undutifulness as her 
sisters: but it must be recollected that on the 
testimony of this daughter's daughter alone, 
(Mrs. Foster I mean,) has been supported all 
that charge of domestic tyranny, with which 
an attempt has been made to sully the me- 
mory of Milton. 

Of his erudition so much has necessarily 
been said in the progress of this work, that 
it would be superfluous to enlarge upon the 

m Wart. ib. p. xxxiii. n Wart, ib p. xxxix. 

• Wart. ib. p. xxxiii. p Richards., Remarks, &c. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 583 

subject. To Doctor Ward, the rhetoric pro- 
fessor of Gresham College, Mrs. Clarke re- 
lated that extraordinary circumstance of her 
and her sisters (it ought with strict accuracy 
to have been sister) having been accustomed 
to read to their father in eight different lan- 
guages. The languages are not specified; 
and, unless we separate the two dialects of 
the Hebrew and the two also of the Spanish, 
we can reckon, without including the English, 
only six of them: but with Hebrew, Greek, 
Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish we know 
that Milton was intimately conversant; and 
that, by unremitting study, he improved this 
large acquaintance with language into the 
mean of the most ample knowledge. If his 
Greek learning must be allowed to have been 
less accurate than that of a few of his contem- 
poraries or of some of the illustrious scholars 
of the present day, it was unquestionably not 
less extensive; and it gave him full dominion 
of the historians, the poets, the orators, the 
philosophers of that favoured country, in 
which the human intellect seems to have at- 
tained its highest stature, its keenest vision, 
and its most comprehensive embrace. Among 
the Greeks, his favourite authors are said to 
have been Euripides, Demosthenes, Plato, 
and Homer, whose long poems he could 



584 LIFE OF MILTON. 

nearly recite by memory. Of the Latins, Ovid, 
as we are certain, possessed a prime place 
in his regard; and, from the circumstantial 
eulogy which he pronounces, in one of his 
familiar epistles, q on the merits of Sallust, we 
may infer the superior value which he as- 
signed to the weighty and pregnant compres- 
sion of that admirable historian. He zea- 
lously however followed the precept of the 
Roman critic, and sedulously formed his taste 
on the great models of Greece. But we must 
not imagine that Milton's knowledge was 
confined within the pale of classical erudi- 
tion. His active and strong intellect tra- 
versed the whole circle of the sciences, and 
there was scarcely one of them which he had 
not penetrated deeper than the surface. 

For those political opinions, by which he 
was steadily actuated from the beginning to 
the termination of his career, some apology 
has always been expected, when in truth 
none can be necessary. From his own to 
the present times, the republicanism of this 
great man has uniformly been regarded as 
throwing a shade over his character, which 
the most affectionate of his biographers have 
rather hoped to extenuate than been ambi- 
tious to remove. 

> Henrico de Bras, P. W. vi. 135^ 



LIFE OF MILTON. 585 

To the sagacious and unprejudiced eye, 
which contemplates the constitution of Eng- 
land, as it was established at the Revolution 
in 1689 ; to the eye, which can command 
this admirable system of liberty in all its 
beautiful complexity; which sees it diffusing 
through the whole subordination of its com- 
munity more equal freedom than has ever yet 
resulted from any other plan of political insti- 
tution; which observes it extending the con- 
troll of law to its highest subject and the 
protection of law to its lowest; which views 
it every where jealously checking and ba- 
lancing its trust of power ; which beholds it 
opening all its emoluments and honours, with 
the exception of one unattainable dignity, to 
the exertions of ability and virtue, and thus 
uniting; the animation of a commonwealth 
with the tranquillity and the executiveness of 
a monarchy ; which surveys it, in short, as it 
efficiently combines democratic energy with 
hereditary power in its legislature, and de- 
mocratic feeling with legal wisdom on its tri- 
bunals, — to such an eye, a republic in all its 
visionary perfection can present only relative 
deformity, and can suggest nothing more than 
an occasion of envy or of glory in the fortu- 
nate inheritance of Englishmen. 

But in Milton's days the political pros* 



586 LITE OF MILTON. 

pect was far less alluring; and, from the spec- 
tacle before him, a wise and a good man 
might very justifiably surrender himself to the 
impulse of different impressions. 

Some of the great component parts of 
the British constitution, (for the liberties of 
England are not the creatures of yesterday,) 
had long before been in existence: the Par- 
liament, with all its pre-eminences of power, 
could boast in fact of its Saxon pedigree; 
the common law of England subsisted in its 
mature vigour; and the trial by jury, with an 
origin to be traced to the remotest times, of- 
fered its equal justice to the criminal and the 
innocent. A concurrence of unfortunate cir- 
cumstances had however disordered the ma- 
chine, and reduced it in the middle of the 
seventeenth century to little more than a 
ruin and a name. The impetuous power of 
the Tudors, springing from the disastrous 
consequences of the wars between the fac- 
tions of York and Lancaster, had overleaped 
every barrier of the constitution ; and the 
ambition of the Stuarts, at a period less fa- 
vourable to the exertion of lawless preroga- 
tive, had diligently followed in the track of 
their insolent and tyrannical predecessors. 
On whatever side he looked, Milton saw no- 
thing but insulted parliaments, arbitrary tax- 



LIFE OF MILTON. 58? 

,ation, illegal and sanguinary tribunals, cor- 
rupted and mercenary law, bigotted and de- 
solating persecution. With that ardent love 
of liberty therefore, which always burns 
brightest in the most expanded and elevated 
bosoms, and fresh from the schools of Greece 
and Rome which had educated the master- 
spirits of the world, it was natural for him to 
turn with delight from the scene in which 
he was engaged, to those specious forms of 
government, the splendid operations of which 
were obvious while the defects were with- 
drawn in a great measure bv distance from 
the sight. He preferred a republic, (and 
who can blame him?) to that unascertained 
and unprotected constitution, which on every 
quarter was open to successful invasion, which 
gave the promise of liberty only, as it were, to 
excite the pain of disappointment, and which 
told men that the}?- had a right to be free in 
the very instant in which it abandoned them 
to oppression. 

With Milton, the idea of liberty was as- 
sociated with that of the perfection of his spe- 
cies; and he pursued the great object with 
the enthusiasm of benevolence, and with the 
consciousness of obedience to a high and im- 
perious duty. Against tyranny or the abuse 
of power, wherever it occurred and by what- 



588 LIFE OF MILTON. 

ever party it was attempted, in the church 
or the state, by the prelate or the presby- 
ter, he felt himself summoned to contend. 
From his continuance in office under the 
usurpation of Cromwell, he has been arraigned 
of inconsistency and a dereliction of prin- 
ciple. But, not to repeat what has already 
been advanced upon the subject, his office 
did not in any way blend him with the usur- 
pation; he had no connexion with the con- 
fidence or the counsels of the Protector; and 
he conceived, with the most perfect truth, 
that he was the servant of his country when 
he acted as the organ of her intercourse with 
foreign states. We have seen his magna- 
nimous address to the usurper; and from 
some of his private letters we may collect 
his acute feelings of mortification and disap- 
pointment in consequence of the afflicted 
state of the commonwealth, and the aban- 
donment of that cause which was always the 
nearest to his heart. 

But sanguine, or, if it must be so, rash 
and blind as was his affection for liberty, he 
was not prepared to receive it from the go- 
vernment of the multitude; or to believe 
that, what he considered as the offspring only 
of wisdom and virtue, could ever be gene- 
rated by the ferment of an uneducated and 



LIFE OF MILTOIST 589 

unenlightened rabble. From his prose-writ- 
ings and his poems many passages might be 
adduced to prove that, drawing the just line 
between liberty and licentiousness, he re- 
garded the latter as the ignorant and de- 
structive demand of the many, while to love 
and cultivate the former was the privilege of 
the favoured and gifted few. His liberal 
and elevated sentiment seems to have been 
precisely the same with that of the excel- 
lent Sir William Jones : " that the race of 
man, to advance whose manly happiness is 
our duty, and ought of course to be our 
endeavour, cannot long be happy without vir- 
tue, or actively virtuous without freedom, or 
securely free without rational knowledge/' 

Though no doubt can exist of the since- 
rity and fervour of Milton's Christian faith, 
some questions have resulted from the pecu- 
liarities of his religious r opinions and prac- 
tice. In the early part of his life he zea^ 
lously adhered, as we know, to the system 
of Calvin, and classed himself with those 
severer religionists who were then indiscri- 
minately branded with the name of Pu- 

r Not of his theological opinions, for these, as far as it ap- 
pears, were orthodox and consistent with the creed of the Church 
of England. The peculiarity of Milton's religious opinions had 
reference to Church government and the externals of devotion. 



590 LIFE OF MILTON. 

ritans. Disgusted, subsequently, with the 
intolerance and the spiritual domination of 
the Presbyterians, he passed into the ranks 
of the Independents; and latterly, as Toland 
asserts, he ceased to be a professed member 
of any particular sect, frequenting none of 
their assemblies, and using none of their pe- 
culiar rites in his family. 

From this assertion of Toland's, and from 
the general silence of Milton's biographers 
respecting his use either of family or of closet 
prayer, some inferences have been deduced 
to the disadvantage of his devotional charac- 
ter. It has been insinuated that, without 
the existence of external rites, religion would 
insensibly slide even from such a mind as 
Milton's; that in these instances of omission 
he was probably acting without his own ap- 
probation, and that death perhaps inter- 
cepted him in his daily resolutions to reform 
a scheme which his reason must s have con- 
demned. The greater part of the premises, 
from which these conclusions are not after all 
very fairly drawn, rests upon nothing more 
than the weakness of negative evidence. 

The fact of Milton's not frequenting in 
the latter period of his life any place of pub- 

s Johnson's J^ife of Milton. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 591 

lie worship, may possibly, though still with 
caution, be admitted on the single testimony 
of £ Toland: but the cause of this fact will 
more properly be sought in the blindness and 
infirmities, which for some of his last years. 
Confined the great author to his house, than 
in any disgust, with which he had been af- 
fected by a nearer insight into the imper- 
fections of the contending sects. On any 
determination of this question, narrow must 
be the mind of that man who can suspect 
the devotion of Milton, merely because it 
was not exercised within the consecrated pre- 
cincts of a church. We are fully aware of 
the usefulness and the duty of public wor- 
ship, and in us the omission of it would be 
criminal : but the degree of the obligation 
must be measured by the standard in the bo- 
som of the individual; and we believe that a 
good man may offer his homage to God, 
with as strong an assurance of acceptance, 

* When I speak of the diffidence with which Toland's tes- 
timony in this instance ought to be received, I refer to those 
unhappy prepossessions on the subject of religion, with which 
this respectable biographer is known to have been biassed; and 
which would naturally induce him to lessen the distance a* 
much as he possibly could, in this essential respect, between 
Milton and himself. If it could be proved that Milton in his 
latter days had contracted a general indifference for religion> a 
great point would be carried for the cause of infidelity. 



592 LIFE OF MILTON. 

in the Lybian desert as in the cathedral of St. 
Paul's. 

For Milton's disuse of all prayer, in his 
family or by himself, no evidence is pretended 
but what results from the silence of his bio- 
graphers ; and for a part of the alleged fact 
no evidence could have been obtained with- 
out that admission to the privacies of his 
closet, which would be denied to the most 
privileged friendship. The first hours of his 
day were regularly devoted, as we are as- 
sured, to religious reading and meditation; 
and of the time, thus appropriated to devo- 
tion, it is but reasonable to conclude that a 
part was assigned to petition and thanksgiv- 
ing immediately addressed to the great Fa- 
ther of Mercies. With respect to his family, 
we know that he carefully initiated his pu- 
pils into the principles of Christian theology, 
and we cannot without violence bring our- 
selves to believe that he would withhold 
from his children that momentous instruction, 
which he so sedulously imparted to persons 
more remotely connected with him. On the 
supposition therefore, which is by no means 
supported by sufficient testimony, of his hav- 
ing neglected to summon his family to regular 
and formal prayer, I am far from certain that 
he can be convicted of any violent omission of 



LIFE OF MILTON. 593 

duty; for, having impressed their minds with 
a just sense of the relation in which they 
stood to their Creator, he might allowably 
withdraw his interference, and leave them to 
adjust their homage and their petitions to 
their own feelings and their own wants. 

From the materials, which have been left 
to us on the subject, we have now completed 
the history of John Milton; — a man in 
whom were illustriously combined all the 
qualities that could adorn, or elevate the na- 
ture to which he belonged; a man, who at 
once possessed beauty of countenance, sym- 
metry of form, elegance of manners, bene- 
volence of temper, magnanimity and loftiness 
of soul, the brightest illumination of intellect, 
knowledge the most various and extended, 
virtue that never loitered in her career nor 
deviated from her course; — a man, who, if he 
had been delegated as the representative of 
his species to one of the superior worlds, 
would have suggested a grand idea of the 
human race, as of beings affluent with moral 
and intellectual treasure, who were raised and 
distinguished in the universe as the favourites 
and heirs of Heaven. 

The greatness of Milton imparts an in- 
terest to every thing which is connected with 

2 Q 



594 W*B OF MILTOt. 

him, and naturally points our curiosity to 
the fortunes of his descendants. Of the three 
daughters whom he left, and who were by 
his first wife, Anne, the eldest, who with a 
handsome face was deformed, married a mas- 
ter builder, and died with her child in her 
first lying-in: of Mary, the second, we know 
only that she discovered the least affection for 
her father, and died in a single state; and 
Deborah, the youngest, leaving her father's 
house in consequence of some disagreement 
with her step-mother three or four years be- 
fore his decease, accompanied a lady of the 
name of Merian to Ireland, and afterwards 
married Abraham Clarke, a weaver in Spi- 
talfields. The distress, into which she fell, 
experienced some late and imperfect relief 
from the libcralilv of Addison, and the less 
splendid munificence of Queen Caroline; from 
the former of whom she received a handsome 
donation, with a promise, which death pre- 
vented him from accomplishing, of a perma- 
nent provision; and from the latter a present, 
improperly called royal, of fifty guineas. She 
strongly resembled her father's portrait, and 
possessed good sense with genteel manners. 
By the affection also, which she discovered 
for her father manv years after his death, she 



LIFE OF MILTON. 595 

seems to have been intitled to that partial 
regard with which he is reported to have dis- 
tinguished her. 

Of her seven sons and three daughters, 
two only left any offspring; Caleb, who, mar- 
rying in the East Indies, had tw r o sons whose 
history cannot be traced; and Elizabeth, who 
married Thomas Foster, of the same profession 
with her father, and had by him three sons 
and four daughters, who all died young and 
without issue. In penury and age, she was 
discovered in a little chandler's shop, and 
brought forward to public notice by the ac- 
tive benevolence of Doctor Birch and Doctor 
Newton. In consequence of this awakened 
attention to the grand- daughter of Milton, 
Comus was u acted for her benefit, and John- 
son, associated at that time as he was in the 
injurious labours of the infamous Lauder, 
did not hesitate to supply the occasional pro- 
logue. The produce of this benefit was only 
one hundred and thirty pounds; and, with 
this small sum between her and her former 
wretchedness, she relapsed into indigence 
and the obscurity of her shop. She died, 
as I am informed by a paragraph x in one of 

* April 5th 170O. 
x This paragraph which is preserved in the fe Memoirs of 
Thomas Hollis, Esq. (v. i. p. 114.) shall here be transcribed. 



596 live or miltojS'. 

the contemporary newspapers, on the 9th of 
May, 1754; and with her, as it is highly pro- 
bable, expired the last descendent of the im- 
mortal Milton. 

Some of the little information, which she 
supplied respecting her grandfather and his 
family, seems to have been erroneous. For 
the fact of his second wife dying in child- 
bed we have the testimony not only of 
Philips, but of Milton himself, who in the 
sonnet on her death makes a direct y allusion 
to its cause; and yet Mrs. Foster affirmed that 
this lady died of a consumption, at a period 
of more than three months after her lying- 
in. When Mrs. Foster mentioned France as 
the birth place of our author's father, she 
was also mistaken; and she was again un- 
questionably wrong if she affirmed, as it is 
said, that her mother and her aunts had not 
been taught and were unable to write. When 
she mentioned however that her grandfather 
seldom went abroad during the latter years 
of his life, and was at that time constantly 
visited by persons of distinction among his 

tf On Thursday last, (May 9, 1/54) died at Islington, in the 
66th year of her age, after a long and painful illness which she 
sustained with Christian fortitude and patience, Mrs. Elizabeth 
Foster, granddaughter of Milton." 

y " Mine, as whom, wash'd from spot of childbed taint, 
Purification in the old law did save," &c. Son. xxiii. 



LIFE OF MILTON. 597 

countrymen and foreigners, her relation is 
supported by its probability and by the con- 
currence of his contemporary biographers. 
She spoke of three portraits of her illustrious 
ancestor, which had been painted at different 
periods of his life; the first, when he was at 
school; the second, when he was about the 
age of twenty-five, and the last, when he was 
advanced in years. 

The first of these portraits is that painted 
in 161 8 by Cornelius Janssen, which we have 
noticed in one of the first pages of our work. 
It is a half-length picture of the boy Mil- 
ton ; and, having been first purchased from 
the executors of Milton's widow by Mr. 
Charles Stanhope, at the sale of his effects 
it became the property of the late Mr. 
Thomas Hollis; by whom being bequeathed 
to Mr. Brand, it has subsequently been trans- 
mitted by the will of this last gentleman to 
the reverend Doctor Disney; and with him it 
at present remains. Of the two other por- 
traits, unless the last be that crayon drawing 
by Faithorne, for which Milton sate in his 
sixty-second year and which is reported to 
have the most strongly resembled him, 2 I 
can communicate no particular intelligence. 

z On the production of this portrait it was that Mrs. Clarke, 
affected by the resemblance, broke out into those affectionate 
exclamations, of which we have spoken; 



5Q8 LIFE OF MILTON. 

They, who are desirous of minute informa- 
tion respecting the portraits of this great 
man and the numerous engravings which 
have been made from them, may find it in 
the edition of his juvenile poems published 
by Mr. Warton, 3 and in the " Memoirs of 
Thomas Hollis." b 

On the back of the miniature picture by 
Cooper, (which was purchased by Sir Joshua 
Reynolds, and is said, though, as I conceive, 
very erroneously, to be of Milton,) is written, 
" This picture belonged to Deborah Milton, 
who was her father's amanuensis/' I adduce 
this circumstance as an additional attestation 
of a fact, which 1 have related on the autho- 
rity of Aubrey and Wood. 

Milton's armorial bearings were, argent, 
a spread eagle, with two heads gules, legged 
and beaked sable. A small silver seal with 
these arms, with which he was accustomed 
to seal his letters, is still preserved. On the 
death of Foster, the husband of Milton's 
grand-daughter, it passed, through one inter- 
mediate hand, into the possession of Mr. T. 
Hollis who purchased it in 1761. Accompa- 
nying the rest of the Hollis property in its tran- 
sits, it at present forms one of the curiosities 
in the cabinet of the liberal Doctor Disney. 

a P, 529. in the note. b Vol. i. p. 1 13. 11?, 



APPENDIX, 



AD PATREM.* 



Nunc mea Pierios cupiam per pectora fontes 
Irriguas torquere vias, totumque per ora 
Volvere laxatum gemino de vertice rivum ; 
Ut, tenues oblita sonos, audacibus alis 
Surgat in officium venerandi Musa parentis. 
Hoc utcunque tibi gratum, pater optime, carmen, 
Exiguum meditatur opus -, nee novimus ipsi 
Aptius a nobis quae possunt munera donis 
Respondere tuis, quamvis nee maxima possint 
Respondere tuis, nedum ut par gratia donis 
Esse queat, vacuis quae redditur arida verbis. 
Sed tamen haec nostros ostendit pagina census, 
Et quod habemus opum charta numeravimus ista, 
Quae mihi sunt nullae, nisi quas dedit aurea Clioj 
Quas mihi semoto somni peperere sub antro, 
Et nemoris laureta sacri Parnassides umbrae. 

Nee tu vatis opus divinum despice carmen ; 
Quo nihil aethereos ortus et semina coeli, 
Nil magis humanam commendat origine mentem, 
Sancta Prometheae retinens vestigia flammae. 
Carmen amant superi, tremebundaque Tartara carmen 
Ima ciere valet, divosque ligare profundos, 
Et triplici duro Manes adamante coercet. 
Carmine sepositi retegunt arcana futuri 
Phcebades, et tremulae pallentes ora Sibyllae : 
Carmina sacrificus sollennes pangit ad aras, 
Aurea seu sternit motantem cornua taurum^ 
Seu ciim fata sagax fumantibus abdita nbris 
Consul it, et tepidis Parcam scrutatur in extis. 

* For the reference to this poem see p. 47, 



600 APPENDIX. 

Nos etiam, patrium tunc cum repetemus Olympum, 
JEievnxque morae stabunt immobilis aevi, 
Ibimus auratis per cceli templa coronis ; 
Dulcia suaviloquo sociantes carmina plectro, 
Astra quibus, geminique poli convexa sonabunt. 
Spiritus et rapidos qui circinat igneus orbes, 
Nunc quoque sidereis intercinit ipse choreis 
Immortale melos, et inenarrabile carmen; 
Torrida dum rutilus compescit sibila Serpens, 
Demissoque ferox gladio mansuescit Orion, 
Stellarum nee sentit onus Maurusius Atlas. 
Carmina regales epulas ornare solebant, 
Cum nondum luxus, vastaeque irnmensa vorago 
Nota gulae, et modico spumabat ccena Lyaeo. 
Turn, de more sedens festa ad convivia, vates, 
jEsculea intonsos redimitus ab arbore crines, 
Heroumque actus, imitandaque gesta canebat, 
Et chaos, et positi late fundamina mundi, 
Reptantesque deos, et alentes numina glandes, 
Et nondum iEtnaeo quaesitum fulmen ab antro. 
Deniqne quid vocis modulamen inane juvabit, 
V T erborum sensusque vacans, numerique loquacisr 
Silvestres decet iste choros, non Orphea, cantusj 
Qui tenuit fluvios et quercubus addidit aures 
Carmine, non cithara; simulacraque functa canendo 
Compulit in lacrymas : habet has a carmine laudes. 

Nee tu perge, precor, sacras contemnere Musas, 
Nee vanas inopesque putn, quarum ipse peritus 
Munere mille sonos numeros componis ad aptos j 
Millibus et vocem modulis variare canoram 
Doctus, Arionii merito sis nominis haeres. 
Nunc tibi quid mirum si me genuisse poetam 
Contigerit, charo si tarn prope sanguine juncti, 
Cognatas artes studiumque affine sequamur? 
Jpse volens Phoebus se dispertire duobus, 
Altera dona mihi, dedit altera dona parentij 
' Dividuumque Deum, genitorque puerque, tenemus. 

Tu tamen ut simules teneras c-disse Camceoas, 



APPENDIX. 601 

Non odisse reorj neque enim, pater, ire jubebas 
Qua via lata patet, qua pronior area lucri, 
Certaque condendi fulget spes aurea nummi : 
Nee rapis ad leges, male custoditaque gentis 
Jura, nee insulsis damnas clamoribus aures : 
Sed, magis excultam cupiens ditescere mentem, 
Me procul urbano strepitu, seeessibus altis 
Abductum, Aoniae jucunda per otia ripae, 
Phoebaeo lateri comitem sinis ire beatum. 
Officium ehari taceo commune parentis; 
Me poscunt majorat tuo, pater optime, sumptu 

Cum mihi Romuleae patuit facundia linguae, 

Et Latii veneres, et, quae Jovis ora decebant, 

Grandia magniloquis elata vocabula Graiis, 

Addere suasisti quos jactat Gallia flores; 

Et quam degeneri novus Italus ore loquelam 

Fundit, barbaricos testatus voce tumultusj 

Quaeque Palaestinus loquitur mysteria vates. 

Denique quicquid habet coelum, subjectaque ccelo 

Terra parens, terraeque et ccelo interfluus aer, 

Quicquid et unda tegit, politique agitabile marmor, 

Per te nosse licet, per te, si nosse libebit : 

Dimotaque venit spectanda scientia nube, 

Nudaque conspicuos inclinat ad oscula vultus, 

Ni fugisse velim, ni sit libasse molestum. 

I nunc, confer opes, quisquis malesanus avitas 

Austriaci gazas Periianaque regna praeoptas. 

Quae potuit majora pater tribuisse, vel ipse 

Jupiter, excepto, donasset ut omnia, coelo? 

Non potiora dedit, quamvis et tuta fuissent, 

Publica qui juveni commisit lumina nato, 

Atque Hyperionios currus, et fraena diei, 

Et circum undantem radiata luce tiaram. 

Ergo ego, jam doctae pars, quamlibet ima, catervse, 

Victrices hederas inter laurosque sedebo ; 

Jamque nee obscurus populo miscebor inerti, 

Vitabuntque oculos vestigia nostra profanos. 
Fste procul, vigiles Curae, procul este, Querela?, 



602 APPENDIX. 

Invidiaeque acies transverso tortilis hirquo, 
Saeva nee anguiferos extende, Calumnia, rictus; 
In me triste nihil, fcedissima turba, potestis, 
Nee vestri sum juris ego : securaque tutus 
Pectora, vipereo gradiar sublimis ab ictu. 

At tibi, chare pater, postquam non aequa merenti 
Posse referre datur, nee dona rependere factis, 
Sit memorasse satis, repetitaque munera grato 
Percensere animo, fidaeque reponere menti. 

Et vos, O nostri, juvenilia carmina, lusus, 
Si modo perpetuos sperare audebitis annos, 
Et domini superesse rogo, lucemque tueri, 
Nee spisso rapient oblivia nigra sub Oreo; 
Forsitan has laudes, decantatumque parentis '• 
Nomen, ad exemplum, sero servabitis aevo. 



TO MY FATHER. 

O ! that, descending from the two-fold hill, 
Pieria's fountain would my bosom fill j 
Through all its depths, in limpid fancy, roll, 
Blend with my thought and sparkle in my soul : 
That thus my song might happily aspire 
From meaner themes to hail my honour'd sire. 
The Muse, thou best of parents! fain would twine 
A wreath to crown paternal worth like thine. 
The gift, though small, my sire will not refuse : 
Nor know we how, without the according Muse, 
To find what we may offer, you receive, 
In fond requital of the love you give : 
To form the just requital of your love, 
Poor w r ould the Muse with all her offerings prove: 
To absolve my mighty debt her gifts how vain— 
A tuneful nothing, and a barren strain. 
But in my numbers all my wealth resides ; 
I own no means of recompense besides; 



APPENDIX. 603 

My sole exchequer fill'd by Clio's smile ; 

The regal maid, who crowns my faithful toil : 

Who, as beneath her laurel shade I dream, 

Visits my slumbers in a golden stream. 

Nor slight the treasures of the harmonious Nine, 

Who greatly speak the source of man, divine : 

Show that he caught a sparkle from above; 

His breast still glowing with the lire of Jove. 

Heaven's ear is charm'd with song: controlling verse 

With thrilling force dire Tartarus can pierce; 

With chains of triple adamant compell 

The dusky hosts, and bind the powers of hell. 

In verse the priestess shakes the Pythian cave: 

Rapt into verse, the pale-eyed Sybills rave: 

Verse smooths the sacrificer's holy prayer 

At the dread altar, as his hands prepare 

To strike the bull that threats in gaudy state; 

Or in the breathing entrails grope for fate. 

We too, when raised to our celestial land, 

Where time in one stupendous pause shall stand, 

Crown'd with pure gold shall tread the eternal fane, 

Attuning to the lyre the numerous strain : 

W r hile the pleased stars, that gem the vaulted sky, 

Catch the soft tones, and ring in sweet reply. 

The guardian Power, who, throned on every sphere, 

Wheels the vast orb, and guides its proud career, 

Pours, as he circles through the starry throng. 

The unutterable notes of angel- song. 

Fierce Ophiuchus hears with mute delight; 

And stern Orion checks the threaten'd fight; 

While Atlas, as the lays abstract his soul, 

Exults, unconscious of the incumbent pole. 

When yet the social board, by reason graced, 

Disdain'd subservience to the glutton taste; 

When modest Bacchus gave the frugal cheer, 

The feasts of monarchs own'd the Muses dear. 

There sate the bard in state above the rest, 

His unshorn locks with oaken wreaths compress'd: 



604 APPENDIX. 

His the high deeds of heroes to rehearse, 
And bid the great examples live in verse : 
His with sublimer spirit to recite 
The world first rising from essential night > 
And infant deities with acorns fed, 
Unarm'd as yet from thund'ring iEtna's bed. 
Nor aught avail the melodies of tone 
To words un wedded, and the Muse unknown. 
'Twas not the harp of Orpheus, but the song 
That held the floods, and drew the trees along ; 
Touch'd the hard breasts of spectres with consent; 
And made their eyes in stony showers relent. 
Nor you affect to scorn the Aonian quire, 
Bless'd by their smiles, and glowing with their fire: 
You, who, by them inspired, with art profound 
Can wield the magic of proportion'd sound : 
Through thousand tones can teach the voice to stray, 
And wind to harmony its mazy way, 
Arion's tuneful heir ! — then wonder not 
A poet-child should be by you begot. 
My kindred soul is warm with kindred flame, 
And the son treads the father's track to fame, 
Phoebus con trolls us with a common sway; 
To you his lyre commends, to me his lay : 
Whole in each bosom makes his just abode; 
With child and sire the same, though varied God. 

Yet that you hate the Muse is but profess'd : 
Her secret love is cherish'd in your breast. 
Else why not urge my steps where fortune lies 
In the prone path, and vaunts her gaudy prize : 
Why not condemn me, with the bar's hoarse throng, 
To gather affluence from a nation's wrong: 
Why rather seek with intellectual gold 
To deck my mind, and to my sight unfold, 
Withdrawn in shades from lucre's noisy band, 
The beauteous vision of the Aonian land: 
Give me through all its bloomy wilds to stray, 
The bless'd companion of the God of day ? 



APPENDIX. 605 

I pass the endearing fatherly caress, — 

And in the greater kindness lose the less. 

When by your bounty, sire, the words, that hung, 

In strength and sweetness, on the Latian's tongue, 

I now had learn'd; and, what even Jove could speak, 

The full sonorous accents of the Greek -, 

Your love persuasive press'd me to advance, 

And glean the flowers that strew the page of France : 

To win Italia's modern Muse, who shows 

The base pollution of barbarian foesj 

And read the native strains of hallow'd lore, 

Taught by heaven-tutor'd Palestine of yore. 

Nor yet content, you led my curious eye 

To scan the circling wonders of the sky : 

Of air the lucid secrets to reveal, 

And know what earth's and ocean's depths conceal. 

Thus brought to science in her inmost seat, 

You broke the cloud that veil'd her last retreat; 

And offer'd, in her plenitude of charms, 

The naked goddess to my youthful arms : 

And, if your power had match'd your will to bless, 

Now should my arms the heavenly fair possess. 

Mad worshippers of gold! — and will ye dare 

With mine your glittering treasures to compare ? 

Mine wealth intangible, — and haply your's — 

All that the sun in India's lap matures. 

Say could a father more than mine have given. 

If Jove that father, and reserved his heaven ? 

Had it been safe, the boon less precious far. 

When Hyperion lent his blazing car; 

Sent forth his boy in all the god's array, 

And crown'd him with intolerable day. 

Now deck'd with ivies and immortal bays, 

One, though the meanest of the sons of praise, 

High shall I keep the tenor of my state 

O'er the base crowd, and lifted from their fate. 

Hence, wakeful Cares, and pining Sorrows fly ! 

Hence leering Envy, with thy sidelong eye! 



606 



APPENDIX. 



Slander in vain thy viper-jaws expand ! 
No harm can touch me from your hateful band I 
Alien from you, my breast, in virtue strong, 
Derides the menace of your reptile throng. 

Since then, dear sire, my gratitude can find, 
For all your gifts, no gifts of equal kind: 
Since every prouder wish my powers confine- 
Accept, for all, this fond recording line: 
O! take the love that strives to be express'd! 
O! take the thanks that swell within my breast! 
And you, sweet triflings of my youthful state, 
If strains like you can hope a lasting date: 
Unconscious of your mortal master's doom, 
If ye maintain the day, nor know the tomb, 
From dark forgetfulness, as time rolls on, 
Your power shall snatch the father and the son : 
And make them live to teach succeeding days, 
How one could merit, and how one could praise. 



Speaking of this translation of mine, (and 
of no other translation in my volume does 
he intimate even a suspicion of the existence,) 
Mr. Hayley says, " This translation has con- 
siderable merit: but my opinion of the re- 
spectable author's taste and candour is such, 
that I persuade myself he will agree with me in 
thinking the blank verse of Cowper, in expres- 
sing the same ideas, has more happily caught 
the sweetness and spirit of the original/' 

To a compliment of this description I 
shall not make any reply. If I could with 

c See the preface to Cowper's translations of Milton's Latin 
and Italian Poems, p. xvi. 



APPENDIX. 607 

propriety transcribe in this place the entire 
subject of Mr. Hayley's preference, I should 
confidently leave to my readers the easy task 
of deciding on that Gentleman's candour and 
taste: but I must content myself with making 
a short extract from the version in question; 
and for the sole purpose of subjoining a re- 
mark on it. 

" The fiery spirit pure, 
That wheels yon circling orbs, directs himself 
Their mazy dance with melody of verse. 
Unutterable, immortal, hearing which 
Huge Ophiuchus holds his hiss suppress'd, 
Orion soften'd drops his ardent blade, 
And Atlas stands unconscious of his load." 

(Cowpers Trans. &c. p. 60.) 

In my translation of this verse in the ori- 
ginal, 

" Torrida dum rulilus compescit sibila Serpens," 

I assumed the liberty of substituting one 
constellation for another, Ophiuchus (the 
serpent-holder, or Hercules strangling the 
snakes,) for the serpent. This license, though 
venial, I regarded as bold; and I was conse- 
quently rather surprised when I discovered 
in the version, published by Mr. Hayley, the 
very same substitution, accompanied with the 
whimsical impropriety of having the hisses of 
Milton's serpent attributed to the man, who 



608 APPENDIX. 

had been obtruded into the serpent's place. 
In a note, I shall extract from Mr. Hayley's 
publication a few other passages in which 
the likeness to some of my lines must be al- 
lowed to be striking. If these translations in 
their published state are truly and verbally 
as they came from Mr. Cowper's pen, the 
resemblance in every case must be acknow- 
ledged to be fortuitous : for their respectable 
author died before I thought of translating 
any of Milton's Latin poems; and my work 
issued from the press more than two years be- 
fore these versions of Mr. Cowper's (with the 
exception of thosesmall portions of them which 
were inserted in Mr. Hayley's biography) made 
their appearance in the world. To those cri- 
tics, who may either adopt Bishop Hurd's 
canons on the marks of imitation or form 
others for the regulation of their own judg- 
ments, the matter of my note may suggest a 
subject of curious speculation. 

c On some coif d brooder o'er a ten years cause, 
Thunder the Norman gibberish of the laws. 

Cowper, p. 10. 

Pompous and pregnant with a ten years cause, 
The prating, puzzled pleader of the laws. 

S. p. 66. 

There virgins oft, unconscious what they prove, 
What love is know not, yet unknowing love. 

Cowper, p. 10. 



APPENDIX. 609 

My friend, the reverend Francis Wrang- 

There a new feeling oft the maiden proves; 
Knows not 'tis love, but while she knows not, loves. 

S.p.6<5. 

And I will e'en repass Cam's reedy pools, 
And face once more the warfare of the schools. 

Cowper, p. 13. 

And, (fix'd my visit to Cam's rushy pools,) 
To bear once more the murmur of the schools. 

S. p. 69. 

Another Leonora once inspired 
Tasso, with fatal love to phrenzy fired. 

Cowper, p. 42. 

Another Leonora's charms inspired 

The love that Tasso's phrenzied senses fired. 

S. p. 140. 

And Hecaerge with the golden hair. 

Cowper, p. 70. 
And Hecaerge with the golden hair. 

S. p. 154. 

Won by his hospitable friend's desire, 

He soothed his pains of exile with the lyre. 

Cowper, p. 7L 

Would sing, indulgent to his friend's desire, 
And cheat his tedious exile with the lyre. 

S. p. 155, 

Ah ! blest indifference of the playful herd, 
None by his fellow chosen or preferr'd. 

Cowper, p. 80, 

How blest, where, none repulsed and none preferr'd, 
-One common friendship blends the lowing herd. 

S. p. 190. 

2 R 



610 



APPENDIX 



ham, having favoured me with a complete 
translation of the ode to Rouse, but at a pe- 
riod too late to stand in its proper station in 
my work, I am induced to insert the entire 
composition in this place, that the reader 
may see its beauties in the integrity of the 
whole piece. Of the few verbal alterations, 
which occur in the present copy, some were 
made for the purpose of uniformity: for, not 
emulous of the licentious vagrancy of the ori- 
ginal, the translator has constructed his ode 
on the more correct scheme of the Roman and 
the English Muse. 



JOHN ROUSE, 

The Librarian of the University of Oxford.* 

STROPHE I. 

With one informing mind 
Though looking with a twofold face, 
Go, Book ! and, dressed with simple grace, 
Unlaboured, speak what once the youth design'd: 
While midst Ausonia's classic shade 
Reclined, or in some native glade, 
Yet guiltless of his country's ire 
He struck or Rome's or Albion's lyre ; 
Or roused the thunder of the Tuscan chord, 
And spurning earth's low tracts through fields empyreal soar'd, 

d See p. 276 



APPENDIX. 611 



ANTISTROPHE I. 

What robber's guileful hand — 
When, at the call of friendship sent, 
To Thamis' source thy steps were bent, 
Filch'd thee, dwarf Volume, from thy brother- band ? 
To Thamis' source, — their limpid store 
Where the Pierian sisters pour; 
And, while the tide of choral song 
Flows her sweet shades and flowers among, 
Blazon'd for many an age long past by fame, 
For many an age to come shall glitter Oxford's name/ 

STROPHE II. 

Would but some heavenly Power, 
In pity on our sorrows smile, 
(If sorrows yet have purged our isle, 
And woe's atoning pang hath had its hour,) 
Quell the fierce crowd's unhallow'd roar, 
And back to their loved haunts restore 
The banish'd Nine, who drooping roam 
Without a comforter or home j 
Wing his keen shaft against the noisome race, 
And far from Delphi's stream the harpy- mischief chase. 



* Quis te, parve liber, quis te fratribus 
Subduxit reliquis dolo? 
Cum tu missus ab urbe, 
Docto jugiter obsecrante amico, 
Illustre tendebas iter 
Thamesis ad incunabula 
Caerulei patrisj 
Fontes ubi limpidi 
Aonidum, thyasusque sacer, 
Orbi notus per immensos 
Temporum lapsus redeunte coelo, 
Celeberque futurus in asvum ? 



612 APPENDIX. 

ANTISTROPHE II. 

But thou rejoice, dear Book, 
Though late purloin'd by pilfering hand, 
Or wandering from thy kindred band 
Thou lurkest now in some inglorious nook; 
In some vile den thy honours torn, 
Or by some palm mechanic worn, 
Rejoice! for, lo! new hopes arise 
That thou again may'st view the skies; 
From Lethe's pool oblivious burst to day, 
And win on " sail-broad vans" to highest heaven thy way. 

STROPHE III. 

Thy strains to Rouse belong : 
Thou, his by promise, art deplored, 
As wanting to his perfect hoard, 
By Rouse, firm guardian of eternal song — 
Rouse, who a nobler treasure keeps, 
Than that on Delphi's craggy steeps, 
In honour of Latona's child 
By Grecia's pious bounty piled, 
(Where Attic Ion watch'd the sacred door,) 
Tripod, and votive vase, and all the holy store. f 

f Nam te Roiisius sui 
Optat peculi, numeroque justo 
Sibi pollicitum queritur abesse; 
Rogatque venias ille, cujus inclyta 
Sunt data virum monumenta curae: 
Teque adytis etiam sacris 
Voluit reponi, quibus et ipse praesidet, 
JEternorum operum custos fidelis; 
Quaestorque gazse nobilioris 
Quam cui praefuit Ion, 
Clarus Erechtheides, 
Opulenta dei per templa parentis, 
Fulvosque tripodas, donaque Delphica, 
Ion, Actaea genitus Creusa. 
For the other stanzas of the original Ode see p. 2/7, 2/8, 
279, 280. 



APPENDIX. 613 

ARISTROPHE III. 

'Tis thine to hail the groves, 

Her vale's green charms where Oxford spreads: 

Thine her fair domes and velvet meads, 
Which more than his own Delos Phoebus loves 

Than Pindus more ; — and thine, proud choice! . 

(Since thou by friendship's partial voice 

Art call'd to join the immortal band,) 

Midst bards of giant fame to stand; 
Bards of old Greece and Rome the light and pride, 
Whose names shall float for aye on time's o'erwhelming tide. 

EPQDE. 

And ye, my other toils, 

Not toil'd in vain, some distant day 

From Envy's fang shall speed your way, 
Where Rouse protects and favouring Hermes smiles. 

There nor the rabble shall revile, 

Nor factious critics pour their bile: 

But, hoarded to a happier age, 

A purer race shall scan the page 5 
With heart unwarp'd your humble worth regard, 
Trample on Spleen's pale corse, and bless the patriot bard. 



Mr. Warton, the late Laureat, having 
been frequently mentioned in the preceding 
pages, and not always with that respect which 
his friends imagine to be due to him, let me 
openly avow, in this unconnected place, that 
whatever credit for probity and worth I am 
disposed to attribute to him as a man, I can 
discover no superior merit in him as a writer; 
and am compelled to class him with those, 
who have accidentally been raised into cele- 



614 APPENDIX. 

brity by the caprice of the day, above the 
rightful claim of their intellectual endow- 
ments or their literary acquisitions. Some of 
his poetry may be allowed to be pretty: but 
his learning was confined and superficial; and 
his criticism, at all times weak, was almost 
uniformly erroneous. He was not perhaps 
an unuseful labourer in the leaden mines of 
Gothic and English antiquity; and his bro- 
ther antiquarians, who can learnedly descant 
on the classification of the various species of 
fools that have formerly flourished in our 
happy land, may approach him with the re- 
verence of the knee, and may assign to those, 
who refuse to unite in the silly worship, what 
opprobrious epithets they please : but unable 
with any efforts to add to their own stature, 
or to breathe the breath of life into their idol, 
they will still continue to be little, and he to 
be uninformed with a sparkle of the Divinity/ 
Like all the small men in the world of 

c See Douce's " Illustrations of Shakspeare," or rather the 
article on this work in the British Critic,, for August 1808 — 
[V. xxxii. 160.] Mr. Douce is a respectable writer and a gen- 
tleman: but his friendly Critic has exceeded him in his generous 
zeal for Mr. Warton's reputation, and has involved all, who refuse 
to seat this author by the side of Aristotle and Homer, in one rush 
of condemnation as <r sciolists and slanderers." I know nothing of 
the offences of others against the fame of the late Laureat : but I 
know that the anger of his friends is too indiscriminate in its ex- 
pressions, and cannot be of any use to their cause. Its scribble 
however will be little read and less regarded. 



APPENDIX. 615 

letters, Mr. Warton would sometimes indulge 
himself with an attack upon the great. Of 
the many blows which he aimed at Milton, 
and to which he was incited, no doubt, by the 
zeal of his tory virtue, some have been no- 
ticed in the course of the present work : but 
other favourites of the Muse could not escape 
him. For borrowing two or three expres- 
sions from II Penseroso and the Comus, Mr. 
W. could thus speak of Pope: " But Pope 
was a gleaner of the old English poets; and 
he was here pilfering from obsolete English 
poetry without the least fear or danger of being 
detected d H!" A few years, however, will sweep 
this acute and candid detector of plagiarism 
to oblivion; and will leave the laurel of 
Eloisa's poet without the vestige of a stain. 
The Laureates brother, the late most respect- 
able and amiable master of Winchester school, 
certainly possessed more liberality of senti- 
ment and a finer taste: but I am assured, by 
those who knew them and are more com- 
petent to decide upon the question than my- 
self, that on the whole he was the inferior 
man. It may be so, and I stand corrected; 
and whenever again I may have occasion to 
speak of them, Thomas shall be placed in the 
sentence before Joseph. 

* Wart. ed. of Milt. Juv. Poems, p. 193- 



6l6 APPENDIX. 

In Lord Teignmouth's elegant biography, 
a work which ought to be placed in the hands 
of every young man of talents and ambition, 
we find a letter/ addressed by the great and 
amiable Sir William Jones to the Countess 
Dowager Spencer, in which the writer speaks 
of Forest-hill, near Oxford, as of a place in 
which Milton " spent some part of his life;" 
which he chose for his retirement soon after 
the event of his first marriage; where he wrote 
I/Allegro and II Penseroso; and where tra- 
dition still preserves the memory of the poet's 
residence, and points to the ruins of his 
chamber. 

To those, who have perused the preceding 
volume, it will be superfluous to remark that 
this relation is founded altogether upon error. 
No biographical circumstances can be ascer- 
tained with more precision than are the va- 
rious residences of Milton. By Edward Phi- 
lips, who must have been acquainted with 
the facts which he assumes to relate, for he 
was then an inmate with his uncle, we are 
informed that Milton, about Whitsuntide, 
(in 1643,) after a month's absence from his 
house in Aldersgate Street, returned home 
with his wife, Mary Powell; that the Lady, 
when she had cohabited for a month with 

d Memoirs of the Life of Sir William Jones, p. 67 . 



APPENDIX. 617 

her husband, deserted him, and did not again 
see him till the memorable period of their 
reconciliation, about the middle of 1645; 
that she was then lodged, in the first instance, 
at the house of a female relation, and was 
soon afterwards settled with her husband in 
his new mansion in Barbican; that under this 
protecting roof her parents and their family 
almost immediately sought an asylum, which 
they continued to enjoy till 1647; and that the 
Powells then returned to Forest-hill, unac- 
companied, (as is evident from the negative 
testimony of the biographer,) by Milton ; whose 
numerous and weighty occupations, indeed, 
must necessarily have exacted his presence in 
town. We may be certain therefore that Mil- 
ton never saw Forest-hill after his departure 
from it on his marriage, nor ever resided there 
longer than during the month of his courtship. 
In this interval indeed it is possible, though, 
as I think, not probable that he wrote 1/ Allegro 
and II Penseroso, and if to the impression of 
Forest-hill and its scenery we are indebted for 
the production of these exquisite pieces, we 
may forgive it for its offence as the seat, and 
perhaps the birthplace of the proud and the 
paltry Powells. The letter, to which I refer, 
is so admirably written, and offers so much 
pleasure to the imagination, that every reader 
must lament with me the circumstances of its 



618 APPENDIX. 

being destitute of the requisite ground of 
fact. As no doubt can be entertained of the 
truth of the story as far as Sir W. Jones's 
immediate responsibility in it extends, we 
must account for the tradition, of which he 
speaks, by supposing that Milton's subsequent 
celebrity attached so much consequence to 
the house which he had casually inhabited 
for a month, as to consecrate it, in the neigh- 
bourhood, to fame. The discovery in the 
ruined mansion of " papers in Milton's own 
hand," is mentioned by Sir W. Jones only as 
a report: but, allowing the information to 
have been correct, the existence of papers in 
a place where the writer had certainly re- 
sided and which belonged to his immediate 
connexions, can easily be conceived without 
incurring the necessity of drawing from it 
any more extensive inference. To oppose 
such a circumstance to that direct and strong 
evidence, on which the leading events in the 
preceding narrative are recorded, would be 
idle and unjustifiable in the extreme. 



Having had occasion more than once in 
the preceding pages to mention the name of 
Lauder, I conceive it to be proper to give 
some account of this unfortunate man's con- 
duct as it is connected with the history of 



APPENDIX. 619 

Milton, and has justly stampt the character 
of this enemy of our great poet with inde- 
lible infamy. 

In the year 1747, William Lauder, a 
teacher of the Latin tongue and a man cer- 
tainly possessing both talents and learning, 
excited general attention by publishing in 
the Gentleman's Magazine, for the months 
of January, February, and March, a paper, 
signed with the initials W. L. which he 
called " Milton's Use and Imitation of the 
Moderns;" intended to prove that our illus- 
trious epic bard had been considerably in- 
debted to some modern Latin poets of very 
inferior fame, from whose works extracts, in 
support of the alleged discovery, were pro- 
duced. To this essay, of which the male- 
volence was discernible through the mode- 
ration of its language, three answers were 
given in the same periodical pamphlet, and 
Milton was defended against the charge of 
plagiarism, without the intimation of any 
doubt respecting the authenticity of Lauder's 
quotations. 

Emboldened by his escape from detec- 
tion and now seemingly confident of ultimate 
success, the impostor in the beginning of the 
year 1750 published, under the same title, 
that larger essay which he had promised. 



620 APPENDIX. 

Though the intemperate language of this work 
would no longer suffer it to be a doubt, not- 
withstanding the strong assertion of probity 
in its concluding paragraph, whether malice 
or the love of truth was the writer's actuat- 
ing motive, Mr. Samuel Johnson, who, from 
his known connexion at this' period with 
Cave, the editor of the Gentleman's Maga- 
zine, may fairly be concluded not to have 
been unassociated with Lauder's former pub- 
licacion, did not scruple to ornament it with 
a preface and a postscript, and thus to make 
himself an accomplice in the malignity, if 
candour obliges us to admit his ignorance of 
the frauds of its author. This essay, the as- 
sertions e of which, extending far beyond its 
. 

e To gratify the curiosity of my readers I will transcribe for 
them some of the passages from this malignant publications- 
premising that they are taken, without any very curious selec- 
tion, from many others stampt with equal or with greater 
rancour. 



P. 59— 

<e The case is exactly the same/' (says Lauder speaking of a 
passage, which he had himself fabricated for Grotius, and 
which, as he affirms, Milton " borrowed without any intention of 
making an acknowledgment,) u in a thousand other places, where 
much false incense has been offered on the wrong altar, and 
many lavish encomiums unjustly prostituted." 



P. 71.— 

e( The State of Innocence or Fall of Man," is a proof how 
readily Milton's poem, which was founded on a tragedy, " (the 



APPENDIX. 621 

pretended proofs, affected the entire over- 

Adamus exul of the juvenile Grotius,)" may be reduced to a 
tragedy again. But there is this remarkable difference between 
the two authors, that Dryden, though never reputed a man of 
the strictest morals, frankly acknowledged to whom he stood 
obliged, while Milton, notwithstanding his high pretensions to 
integrity, most industriously concealed his obligations." 



P. 72, 73. 
" He" (Grotius) lt has as much reason to complain of ungrate- 
ful usage at Milton's hand, as the prince of the Latin poets 
when he exclaimed with indignation, from a consciousness of 
injury done him by Bathyllus, — 

" Hos ego versiculos feci, — tulit alter honores." 



P. 74. 

After ridiculing the honours, which had been paid to Milton 
on the false supposition of his originality, and of the truth with 
which he asserts that his song 

..... pursues 
" Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme,'' 

Lauder says, with reference to one of the vindicators of the great 
poet, " But I must take the liberty to inform him that my no- 
tions of morality taught me quite another lesson than to bestow 
the praise due to ingenuity and integrity on persons of a dif- 
ferent character." 



P. 77— 
" Tis true Ramsay's poem has been lately called a cento 
from Virgil ; but I hope to shew (and I think I have partly done 
it already) that Milton stands infinitely more exposed to that 
censure, being compiled out of all authors, ancient or modern, 
sacred or profane, who had any thing in their works suitable to 



6%Z APPENDIX. 

throw of Milton's poetical and indeed moral 

his purpose : nor do I blame him for this unlimited freedom, but 
for his industriously concealing it. 



P. 86.— 



'* By this time, I hope, the mist of delusion begins to dis- 
perse: for though Milton has been so long in possession of Pa- 
radise that he may even plead prescription in his favour, yet I 
have ventured (and I think successfully) to call his title in ques- 
tion; as unjustly acquired at first, and which therefore, no length 
of time can make valid ; — according to that known and approved 
maxim, quod ab initio vitiosum est tractu temporis non con- 
valescit." 



P. 115.— 
ts And here I could produce a whole cloud of witnesses, as 
fresh vouchers of the truth of my assertion, with whose fine sen- 
timents, as so many gay feathers, Milton has plumed himself; 
like one who would adorn a garland with flowers, secretly taken 
out of various gardens; or a crown with jewels, stolen from the 
different diadems, or repositories of princes; by which means 
he shines indeed, but with a borrowed lustre — a surreptitious 
majesty." 



P. 133. 

" In the sixth book (the greatest part of which, I have al- 
ready observed, is ungenerously copied from this young Ger- 
man." ^Taubman,) &c. 



P. 138. 



" This elegant work," (Taubman's Bellum Angelicum,) 
te among many others, has enabled Milton to reach the summit of 
Parnassus more truly than that extraordinary poetical inspiration 
which the deluded world has imagined him possessed of." — 



APPENDIX. 623 

reputation, was inscribed by Lauder to the 
two Universities; and the cause, between the 
accuser and the numerous admirers of the 
British Homer, was now brought to a decisive 
issue. In this state of things, the indignant 
and agitated public was under the necessity 
of acquiescing for the space nearly of a 
twelvemonth; during which period the forger 
and his auxiliary were permitted to triumph, 



p. 161. 

The circumstance of Milton's refusing to instruct his daugh- 
ters in the languages, which he taught them to read to him, 
was a contrivance, according to Lauder, to keep them in igno- 
rance of his thefts. " Milton well knew" (says this strange 
man,) " the loquacious and incontinent spirit of the sex; and 
the danger, on that account, of intrusting them with so import- 
ant a secret as his unbounded plagiarism : he, therefore, wisely 
confined them to the knowledge of the words and pronunciation 
only, but kept the sense and meaning to himself." Lauder 
strictly observes the precept of the critic, 



servetur ad imura 



Qualis ab incepto processerit et sibi constet. 

The essay concludes in the same inveterate and rancorous 
spirit — with a solemn assertion of the author's purity of motive 
in the love of truth, and with an apology for his not having 
** confined himself within the bounds of decency and modera- 
tion," drawn from the asperity of the controversial language of 
Milton himself, tc who liberally dealt his thunder on all with 
whom he happened to be engaged; and 

SUA QUISQUE EXEMPLA DEBET iEQUO ANIMO PATI. 

To this work be it for ever remembered that Samuel Johnson 
gave his deliberate and unqualified sanction!!! 



624 APPENDIX. 

one for his gratified animosity to the fame 
of the great poet, and the other for the suc- 
cess of his fraudulent contrivances. 

About the end of the same year, (1750,) 
Mr. Douglas, the rector of Eaton Constan- 
tine in Shropshire, (who lately died f with 
the mitre of Salisbury on his brow,) addressed 
to the Earl of Bath a letter intitled, " Mil- 
ton vindicated from the charge of plagiarism 
brought against him by Mr. Lauder." — Hav- 
ing in this pamphlet first clearly proved that 
Lauder's quotations, allowing them to be au- 
thentic, would not support the charges, urged 
with so much indecent vehemence against 
Milton, of plagiarism and an immoral con- 
cealment of truth, the acute and able critic 
proceeds to show that, with impudence un- 
parallelled in the annals of literary impos- 
ture, the passages, which had been cited 
from Masenius, Staphorstius, Taubmannus, 
and the other obscure writers presented on 
this occasion to the public notice, had been 
adapted to the forger's design by the inter- 
polation of lines either immediately fabri- 
cated for the purpose, or transcribed with- 
out alteration from Hogg s translation of the 
Paradise Lost. 

f On the 1 8th of May, 1 807, in his 86th year— universally be- 
loved and lamented. 



APPENDIX. 62.5 

On this complete and irresistible evidence 
of Lauder's defective morality, they, who 
in any way had been connected with his 
publications, thought it expedient to clear 
themselves from the suspicion of any parti- 
cipation of his crimes. In this measure of 
prudence or of probily,his booksellers, (Payne 
and Bouquet in Paternoster Row%) very ho- 
nourably took the lead. On the appearance 
of Mr. Douglas's pamphlet, they instantly 
acquainted Lauder that he must either dis- 
prove the charge, now brought against hirn, 
of forgery, by placing in their hands those 
editions of his authors from which he had 
made his extracts, or that they would " pub- 
licly disclaim all connexion with him, and 
expose his declining the only step left for his 
defence." On his impudently avowing to 
them his dishonest practices, they hastened 
to execute their threat, and to vindicate their 
conduct to the world. Their advertisement 
on this occasion is candid, manly, and ex- 
plicit; and it is remarkable for advancing, 
in extenuation of their credulit}^, the same 
excuse which was afterwards urged, with 
less propriety and a smaller probability of 
truth, by Lauder's literary accomplice/ that 

s Johnson is reported to have said that he thought " the 
man too frantie to be fraudulent." 

1 S 



626 



APPENDIX. 



" the man's want of capacity to contrive and 
execute a fraud precluded a suspicion of 
abuse and interpolation/' From the book- 
sellers, who saw the violence of Lauder and 
were unable to appreciate his powers, this 
apology might very well be received ; but it 
certainly came with an ill grace from the 
mouth of Johnson, who had been connected 
with the impostor, as is highly probable, for 
more than two years, and who could not 
on any supposition be a stranger to the 
acuteness of his intellect or the malice of 
his heart. In this exigency however, it was 
requisite for Johnson to be active in dis- 
avowing his association with falsehood; and 
accordingly he wrote for Lauder a letter of 
penitence and confession, and induced him 
to address it as his own to Mr. Douglas. 
The fate of this ill-starred letter seems to 
have been singularly unfortunate. It failed 
to satisfy the public, and, while it hurt the 
feelings, it promoted none of the purposes 
of Lauder: by Lauder indeed it was subse- 
quently disowned, with some intimation of 
doubt respecting the good faith of his offi- 
cious friend, on whom he professes to have 
reposed with the most perfect confidence. 

The cause of Lauder's hostility to Milton, 
as it is assigned in this publication, is of a na- 



APPENDIX 



62 



ture too curious to be suppressed. Lauder, 
as it seems, had edited, for the use of schools, 
a translation of the psalms into Latin verse 
by Arthur Johnston, a Scotch physician; and 
had pleased himself with the prospect of an 
income from an annual edition of the work: 
but his hopes of profit had been intercepted 
by a wicked couplet h of Pope's in the Dun- 
ciad, which had thrown the Scotch translator 
into contempt, and had consequently checked 
the sale of his production. " I had no par- 
ticular pleasure/' (says Lauder, or rather 
Johnson for him,) " in subverting the reputa- 
tion of Milton, which I had myself once en- 
deavoured to exalt, and of which the foun- 
dation had always remained untouched by 
me had not my credit and my interest been 
blasted, or thought to be blasted by the 
shade which it cast from its boundless ele- 
vation/' Then follows the story which I 
have related, and which the letter-writer thus 
concludes: " On this occasion it w r as na- 
tural not to be pleased; and my resentment, 

h Speaking of Benson,, the poet says, 

" On two unequal crutches propp'd he came, 
Milton's on this-r-on that one Johnston's name.'* 

The unprincipled Lauder assigned afterwards other reasons for 
his conduct: but he seems principally to have been actuated by 
a wish of calling the public attention to those obscure Latin 
poets of which he was then meditating an edition. 



628 APPENDIX. 

seeking to discharge itself somewhere, was 
unhappily directed against Milton"!!! 

The contrition, which Lauder had been 
made to express in this letter, was soon disco- 
vered to be altogether fictitious. In 1754 he 
published another malignant pamphlet; in 
which he shows that his former design was 
not dropped, and threatens to " reinforce 
the charge of plagiarism against the English 
poet, and to fix it upon him by irrefragable 
conviction in the face of the whole world/' — 
This new publication was intitled, " King 
Charles vindicated from the charge of pla- 
giarism, brought against him by Milton, and 
Milton himself convicted of forgery and a 
gross imposition on the public:" and its ob- 
ject was to prove that Milton, for the pur- 
pose of bringing discredit on the Icon Basi- 
like. had interpolated this supposed produc- 
tion of roj^al authorship w T ith Pamela's prayer 
from the Arcadia of Sidney. Though this 
unspecious falsehood was afterwards deemed 
of sufficient consequence to be revived, with 
a notable and hardy contempt of truth, by the 
great literary patron of Lauder, it was now 
unable to obtain that degree of regard which 
was requisite to render it of any use to its au- 
thor: and, failing in this attempt to conci- 
liate the protection of the high royalist party, 



APPENDIX. 629 

he was compelled to retire before the po- 
pular resentment to the West Indies; where 
he is reported to have perished under the 
oppression of penury and contempt. The 
fate of his coadjutor was far more pros- 
perous — 

— Ille crucem tulit — hie diadema. — 

Johnson survived the disgrace of his infa- 
mous alliance to enjoy the opportunity of 
attempting, with much deeper though not 
more effectual wounds, the impassible repu- 
tation of Milton. 

To vindicate him from the imputation, 
to which he became exposed by his inter- 
course with Lauder, it has been urged by 
Johnson's friends that the zeal with which 
he espoused the necessities of Milton's de- 
scendant, Mrs. Foster, and the praise which 
he has assigned to the great poet's muse 
place him above the suspicion of being ac- 
tuated, in this instance of his conduct, b} r 
malice. I must be forgiven if I remark that 
this offer of vindication is both irrelevant and 
defective ;— irrelevant, as benevolence to the 
living, allowing it to be unalloyed with any 
base mixture of ostentation or interest, may 
unite in perfect consistency with enmity to 
the dead; — defective, as the praise, to which 
the appeal has been so confidentlv made, is 



630 APPENDIX. 

evidently penurious, reluctant, compelled by 
the demand of the critic's own character, 
and uniformly dashed and qualified with 
something of an opposite nature: 



medio de fonte leporum 



Surgit amari aliquid quod in ipsis floribus angat. 

While he was depreciating the fame of the 
illustrious ancestor, Johnson could not act 
more prudently, or in a way more likely to 
lead him to his final object, than by acquir- 
ing easy credit as the friend of the distressed 
grandchild ; and the prologue which he wrote 
for her benefit, and which is little more than 
a versification of what he had before attached 
to the pamphlet sullied with Lauder's ma- 
lignity and forgeries, has fully answered the 
writer's purposes by the imputed liberality 
which it has obtained for him, and the 
means with which it has thus supplied him 
of striking, during the repose of suspicion, 
the more pernicious blow. Avowed hosti- 
lity generally defeats its own object; and 
the semblance of kindness has commonly 
been assumed by the efficient assassin for the 
perpetration of his design. Whether, in 
short, in the instance before us, Johnson in- 
dulged, as his friends would persuade us to 
believe, the charitable propensities of his 



APPENDIX. 631 

own heart, or availed himself of the oppor- 
tunity to provide for the interests of his own 
character, the measure may be allowed to 
have been good, or to have been wise, but 
cannot be admitted, in opposition to the tes- 
timony of formidable facts, to have been de- 
monstrative of his favourable disposition to- 
ward Mil Ion. 

If Johnson's conduct, as a critic on the 
poetic works of our great bard, be made the 
subject of our attention, we shall examine it 
in vain for the proof of that regard which 
it is said to exhibit for the reputation of the 
author of Paradise Lost. Let us recollect 
that the smaller poems of our illustrious 
writer were pronounced by Johnson to be 
" peculiar without excellence, and, if dif- 
fering from the verses of others, differing for 
the worse;" that in Milton's Latin poetry the 
critic saw nothing but what was inferior to 
the Latin compositions of Cowley and of 
May; that he made the Lycidas the object 
of his perverse censure, and affected to hold 
its admirers in contempt; that his applause 
of L'Allegro and II Penseroso was formal 
and jejune; that he detracted, as much as a 
sense of decency would permit him, from 
the merit of the Comus; that his strictures 
on the Samson Agonistes were severe; and 
that his high and splendid panegyric on the 



632 APPLNDIX. 

Paradise Lost was connected with a remark, 
which, on its admission, would at once lay 
the lofty edifice of praise in the dust, and by 
proving that this glorious epic was destitute 
of the first great requisite of poetry, the 
power of pleasing, would demonstrate it, 
with all its imputed excellences, to be an in- 
different poem: — let us recollect all this, and 
then let the most candid among us seriously 
determine whether the critic be superior to 
the suspicion of wishing for an opportunity to 
blast the laurels of Milton. 1 In Johnson's de- 
fence it is idle to adduce the elevated terms in 
which he has occasionally mentioned our epic 
bard: Lauder himself has extolled him w T ith 
panegyric equally lofty ; k and the result of 

1 If we are desirous of positive and precise testimony re- 
specting the existence, at the period in question, of malevolence 
to the fame of Milton in the breast of Johnson, we have only 
to turn to the 276th page of Sir John Hawkins's life of this 
author. " While the book" [Lauder's Essay) " was in the press, 
the proof sheets," says this biographer, " were submitted to the 
inspection of our club by a member of it who had an interest 
in its publication, and I could all along perceive that Johnson 
seemed to approve not only of the design, but of the argument 
and seemed to exult in a persuasion that the reputation of Milton 
was likely to suffer by this discovery." — To this assertion made by 
a person immediately conversant with the fact, and not interested 
to misrepresent it — by a person, who was the intimate of John- 
son throughout his life, and was appointed one of his executors 
by his will, nothing has been or can be opposed but the futile evi- 
dence of that praise with which Johnson, as a critic, has occa- 
sionally spoken of the poetry of Milton. 

k For the proof of this assertion I will not ransack Lauder's 



APPENDIX. 633 

strong censure, or even of cold praise, would 
have been more injurious to the critic than 
to the poet. The Paradise Lost was unques- 
tionably a noble poem: but if it could have 
been shown to be the produce of theft, the 

first papers in the Gentleman's Magazine, where it might be 
found, but will transcribe his epitaph on the author of Paradise 
Lost. 

Virorum maximus, Johannes Miltonus, Poeta celeber- 
rimusj — non Anglise modo, soli natalis, verum generis humani 
ornamentum:— cujns eximius liber, Anglicanis versibus con- 
scriptus, vulgo Paradisus Amissus, immortalis illud ingenii 
monumentum, cum ipsa fere aeternitate perennaturum est opus! — 
Hujus memoriam Anglorum primus, post tantum, proh dolor! 
ab tanti excessu poetae intervallum, statua eleganti in loco cele- 
berrimo, ccenobio Westmonasteriensi, posita, regum, principum, 
antistitum, illustriumque Angliae virorum caemeterio, vir ornatis- 
simus Gulielmus Benson prosecutus est. 

The remarks, which Lauder makes on this evidence of his 
veneration for Milton, are worthy also of our notice. " A cha- 
racter as high and honourable as ever was bestowed upon him 
by the most sanguine of his admirers! and as this was my cool 
and sincere opinion of that wonderful man formerly, so I de- 
clare it to be the same still, and ever will be, notwithstanding 
all appearances to the contrary, occasioned merely by passion 
and resentment; which appear however by the €< Postscript" 
to the Essay, to be so far from extending to the posterity of 
Milton, that I recommend his only remaining descendant in 
the warmest terms to the public." 

Here are panegyric and benevolence, of which Milton and 
his granddaughter are the objects, of as high and ardent a na- 
ture as any which have been expressed by Dr, Johnson. In 
diction and imagery the Scotch schoolmaster is evidently infe- 
rior to the English critic and moralist: — but in admiration of 
the deceased poet, and in charity toward the survivor of the 
poet's family, the notorious Lauder refuses to be outdone by the 
celebrated Johnson. 



634 APPENDIX. 

fabricator's proud name would have been an- 
nihilated, and the purposes of his enemy ac- 
complished. The hoslile attempt was cer- 
tainly made; and its failure could not have 
been witnessed without painful disappoint- 
ment by the writer of that Life of Milton, 
which was unhappily sent into the world 
under the sanction of the booksellers of Lon- 
don. Of the radical and pervading malignity 
of this work no doubt can for an instant be 
entertained by any dispassionate reader, and 
it may justly be questioned whether, as the 
writer of the Rambler and of the Life of 
Milton, Dr. Johnson has evinced more friend- 
liness or more enmity to the cause of truth, 
has effected more good or offered more injury 
to the great interests of his species. By a 
party among my contemporaries I am aware 
that this doubt will be strongly, and perhaps 
acrimoniously resented: but, if a page like 
mine may hope to survive to a distant age, 
I feel assured that, by the judgment of a ge- 
neration remote from the prejudices of the 
present, I shall be absolved from the charge 
of wounding truth to gratify passion, even 
though I should assert that the delinquency 
of the libellous biographer is ill compensated 
by the merit of the monotonous and heavy- 
gaited morality of the gloomy and dogmatic 
essayist. 



APPENDIX. 



POSTSCRIPT. 



635 



I had pleased myself with the hope of 
producing this edition of my Life of Milton 
in a state of complete typographical correct- 
ness: but, with the general fate of human 
hopes, mine has been disappointed. Having 
been called into a distant part of the island, 
while the sheets were passing through the 
press, some of my corrected proofs never 
came to the Printer s hand ; and a little inac- 
curacy has been the inevitable consequence 
of their miscarriage. A few trifling errors 
have also escaped my own eye, which is not 
always minutely correct when exercised in 
the literal revision of my own compositions; 
and I have not been in a situation to avail 
myself of the assistance of a friend. In p. 60 
in the first line of the note a superfluous, " a," 
has accidentally fallen between, " nocenda," 
and " numina." In 1. 5 from the bottom of 
p. 62, " Calorum," is printed for " Carolum." 
In the note at p. 114, the scholar will find 
u Iveo-Totfce" divided into two words. In 1. 15 
of p. 121 instead of, " in only/' it should be, 
as it was in the first edition, " only in." Of 
page 216 the last word (in the note) should 
be " three" and not two/' In the 15th 1. of 
p. 219 " Concialitory" is printed for " Con- 



636 APPENDIX. 

ciliatory." In 1. 5 from the bottom of p. 367 
" augustum" is substituted for " angustum." 
In the note of p. 407, " Du Tarn should pro- 
perly be the Tarn." At p. 428 in the note, the 
last word of Sarrau's first distich is printed, 
eoles, instead of " coles:" and in the line 
preceding this distich, " least," ought to be 
" most." I will beg that for, " reciprocality," 
in the 511th page, may be read " recipro- 
cation :" and in the note of p. 535, that la 
Harpe may be written instead of " Le 
Harpe." If the learned reader should ob- 
serve that the nice accentuation of the Greek 
is not always very punctiliously executed, he is 
desired to forgive it, from the almost insuper- 
able difficulty of having so delicate a business 
accurately conducted without the immediate 
and constant superintendence of the author's 
eye in the very office of the Printer. I must 
now acknowledge and correct errors in which 
the Printer has no participation. In the last 
line of page 149> for, " without any other re- 
ference than to that of metre" I would write, 
" with reference only to metre:" and in the 
22d line of page 154, I am desirous of sub- 
stituting, " the sisters" for, " the fathers of 
the Druid line," as a change which is required 
by the conclusion of the paragraph. Chorea 
is a ring or set of dancers without any res- 



APPENDIX. 637 

pect to their sex: but it is evident by what 
follows that these bearers of the Druid-offer- 
ings to Apollo were intended by Milton to be 
females ; and it is extraordinary that this 
effect of my inadvertency should not occur to 
any one of my public or my private critics; 
or to myself, till my translation had passed 
twice through the press. 

On the subject of errors which I am soli- 
citous to rectify, let me not omit to refer to 
one which may be regarded as of no trifling 
moment. In a letter to an eminent bookseller 
in London, which the writer desired his cor- 
respondent to communicate to me, Mr. J. 
Cooper Walker, whose name is known with 
so much distinction in the literary world, 
mentioned that " there was in the library of 
the college of Dublin a collection of Milton's 
pamphlets, bound in one volume, with an 
inscription in his own hand-writing to his 
friend Junius, to whom the book had been 
presented/' Not doubting that this Junius 
was the kinsman of Isaac Vossius, and the 
writer of the treatise, " De Pictura Veterum," 
who passed some time in England and was a 
friend of Milton's, I stated the fact according 
to my conception of it, and adduced Mr. 
C. Walker as my authority for the satement. 
Subsequently however, suspicious of the in- 
formation which I had given, I wrote to Dr. 



638 APPENDIX. 

Butson, the bishop of Clonfert, whose talents, 
erudition, and moral worth make me proud 
to challenge him as my friend, for some 
more specific intelligence on the topic in 
question; and to the kindness of this most 
respectable prelate am I now indebted for 
the power of correcting the mistake of which 
I have been guilty in the note to p. 396. The 
person, to whom is inscribed the volume pre- 
served in the library of Trin. Coll. Dublin, 
was Patrick Young, the librarian of Charles I. 
The words and the arrangement of the inscrip- 
tion are the following: 

Ad doctissimum virum 

Patri : Junium, Johannes 

Miltonus, haec sua, 

unurn in fasciculum 

conjecta, mittit, paucis 

hujusmodi lectoribus 

contentus. 

Patrick Young, who was a prebendary of 
St. Paul's, was probably Milton's neighbour, 
when the latter resided in St. Bride's Church- 
yard; and this circumstance, with the natural 
effect of learning to conciliate its votaries, 
might be sufficient to cement a friendship 
between these two great scholars, notwith- 
standing the opposition of their political 
principles. In the pure sunshine of Athens 
or of Rome, the republican Milton and the 
royalist Young might meet and entertain each 



APPENDIX. 639 

other, without attending to the gloomy and 
pestilential atmosphere which, in that disas- 
trous season, covered and diseased their na- 
tive island. 

For these errors of oversight or misappre- 
hension which I have acknowledged, and 
for many more of a similar nature which 
may have escaped my detection, I will en- 
treat the pardon of my readers; and will 
hope that, imitating the candour of the great 
Roman critic and poet, while they see my 
faults they will suggest the venial cause of 
them in the common imperfection of the mind 
of man. 

Sunt delicta tamen quibus ignovisse velimus. 

Nam neque chorda sonum reddit quem vult manuset mens; 

Poscentique gravem persaepe remittit acutum: 

Nee semper feriet quodcunque minabitur arcus. 

HoR.De Art- Poet. 347. 

But if, refusing the indulgence which I 
solicit, my readers will be strict in remarking 
the imperfections of my page, I can only 
address them in the terms, in which the great 
and the modest Locke addressed Bishop Stil- 
lingfleet: " I see that you would have me 
exact, and without any faults; and I wish 
that I could be so, the better to deserve your 
approbation/' 

More than half of this volume had passed 



640 APPENDIX. 

the press, before 1 obtained a sight of Mr. 
Todd's second edition of the poetical works 
of my author; and to this circumstance must 
be imputed my apparent inattention to this 
respectable publication. To Mr. Todd I have 
formerly professed obligations for the infor- 
mation with which he has supplied me; and 
had I been able to avail myself, at the proper 
period, of this new edition of his biographical 
and editorial labours, I might possibly have 
had more obligations of a similar nature to 
acknowledge. Of some of the new matter 
however, with which his industrious researches 
have enabled him to enlarge his biography, 
I was already possessed; and much of the 
rest I should not perhaps have been very so- 
licitous to employ. With respect to his edi- 
tion of our great poet, I must think that the 
variorum notes are much too numerous, and 
that their bulk might very advantageously 
have been diminished. In two instances, 
which have occurred to me on a hasty glance 
through the volumes, the commentary (the 
general character of which is redundancy) 
proves to be deficient. On that place in the 
2d book of Paradise Lost, 592 — 

A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog, 
'Twixt Damiata and mount Casius old, 
Where armies whole have sunk : 



APPENDIX, 641 

the classical prototype is not cited ; and 
we are referred to Herodotus and Lucan, in 
none of whose pages is to be found an}' 
authority for the assertion in the line dis- 
tinguished by italics. The passage to which 
Milton immediately points on this occasion is 
in Diodorus. After describing the lake Ser- 
bonis, this historian says, Sto vtai, ttoXXo) tuv 

OtyvO&VTM TV}V 101Q77JTC& TV TOWUy {JLtTCt gpOtTLVftOtTUV 

oauv yQuviPoijaaLVy r%g vjroJCBtfjL'evvjg od'd diot{AapTOVT£c. 

" Wherefore many, wandering from the pro- 
per road, and not previously acquainted with 
the nature of this place, have, with their whole 
armies, been swallowed up in it/' Dio. Sic. 
1. 35. ed. Wessel. 1746. 

The other instance of omission, to which I 
allude, is in the 7th book of the Paradise 
Lost, 1. 142— 



" bv whose aid. 



This inaccessible high strength the seat 
Of Deity supreme, us dispossess'd, 
He trusted to have seised, &c. 

In this passage, " us," by the invariable 
rule of the English Grammar ought to be, 
" we;" and yet the error is not noticed in the 
commentary. But it is not intended to throw 
trifles of this nature into the scale to weigh 
against the general merit of the edition. Of 
more consequence however is the neglect 

2 T 



642 APPENDIX. 

throughout these volumes of the proper poetic 
orthography; or the indiscriminate and un- 
systematic excision of the e, in the inflected 
tenses and the perfect participle of the verb. 
By this inconsiderate conduct of the Editor 
much mischief has been done; and if a page 
of his Milton were to be read -according to 
the invariable rules of English pronunciation, 
the ear would be frequently outraged with 
barbarous sounds, occasioned by the erroneous 
shortening of the penultimate vowel, or the 
equally erroneous hardening of the penulti- 
mate consonant, when it happened to be 
c, or g. In the following lines for instance — 

V If thou beest he: but O! how fallen! how changed 
From him, who in the happy realms of light, 
Cloth'd with transcendent brightness, didst outshine, &c. v 

the g in " chang'd" is hard as in clang or 
rang, and the o in cloth'd is short as in clot 
or plot. — In these lines however the Editor 
has deviated from his usual practice by leav- 
ing the e of the inflexion in " beest" and 
" fallen," in the latter of which words it hap- 
pens to be of very immaterial consequence. 
It is strange that a principle of poetic ortho- 
graphy which is so obvious, and has more 
than once been publicly explained, should 
yet not be followed: but if the editors of our 
poets are inflexibly bent on retaining their 



APPENDIX. 643 

mumpsimus, the evil is irremediable, and their 
perverse fancies must be indulged at the ex- 
pence of principle and consistency. Mr. 
Todd in this instance is not more blameable 
than the multitude of his brother-editors; and 
I only lament that he should be involved in 
their common error. As an editor of our 
great poet, he is certainly entitled to praise 
from the public; and he seems also to be a 
most estimable, candid and amiable man. 
He is indeed, if such a thing can be, too 
good-natured and benevolent; and his eulogy 
is lavished with so indiscriminate a hand as 
to be depreciated considerably in its currency. 
By his sentence, almost every writer on his 
subject is excellent and admirable: in his pages 

Hayley is animated and interesting and 

acute. My shareof attention from him, though 
not of a size to oppress me with obligation, is 
sufficiently ample; and fully adequate to my 
claims. On some occasions, the Editor and 
I do not seem to understand each other. 
With the opportunity of correcting my error 
if he had made me sensible of it, I have suf- 
fered the note, (p. 572,) on the Bishop 1 of 
LandafTs crimination of Milton, to remain, 
in all its words, syllables, and letters, as it 

1 See Todd's Life of Milton, 2d ed. p.*fS, ?Q t SQ. 



644 APPENDIX. 

was; and if it should not refute the worthy 
Prelate's 30th of January charge against my 
author, it will stand as the record of my own 
confused apprehension. 

With respect to Mr. Warton's insufficiency 
as a critic, my opinion is formed on too large 
an acquaintance with that gentleman's pro- 
ductions ever to be retracted. When m I cen- 
sure him for his attack upon Pope, it is not the 
substance but the manner of the annotator's 
remark which excites my reprehension. I 
require not to be told that Pope gleaned 
poetic expression from every page in which 
it was to be found: but I may be allowed to 
resent a charge brought against the great bard 
of Twickenham for pilfering from an old poet, 
because he thought he could pilfer without being 
exposed to detection. Pope borrowed poetic 
phraseology from many of our old poets: but 
he borrowed it from Dry den, who was in 
every person's hand, more largely than from 
all our old poets together. He was too af- 
fluent and powerful to pilfer or to be in dread 
f)f detection: but, like his master, Dryden, 
before him, he took by the right of genius 
whatever he could appropriate to his own 
purposes; and the seizure was made under 
the full ey~e of the sun. If, during the life- 

m Id. p. 163. 



APPENDIX. 645 

time of the dreaded satirist Mr.Warton had 
expressed himself in the language which I 
have reprehended, it is probable that he 
would have obtained a place among the divers 
in Fleet-ditch; and instead of the muse, in 
whose arms his admirers now fancy that he 
reposes, would have been a successful rival 
of Smedley's, and strained to the oozy bosom 
of a mud-nymph. Mr. Walton's treatment 
of others is unquestionably not such as to 
make him the subject of any peculiar lenity. 
Tickell and Elijah Fenion, each of them in 
talents and general respectability of character 
at least his equal, experience his severity on 
innumerable occasions, and are always cer- 
tain, whenever they occur to him, of being 
felled by his unmerciful buffets. He fre- 
quently supplies, as I have acknowledged, 
very useful information: but in criticism he 
is uniformly unfortunate; and if every note 
of his, in which opinion and critical remark 
are hazarded, were to be erased from this va- 
riorum edition of Milton's poetry, the work 
would be improved by the circumstance. But 
with Mr. Todd and his literary community, 
the late Laureat is one of Apollo's assessors on 
the forked hill: and there let him remain for 
me, and be the oracle of those who may chuse 



G46 APPENDIX. 

to resort to him for inspiration, and gratefully 
to fumigate him with incense. 

Of Mr. Todd, let me repeat that my opi- 
nion is highly favourable. His notes are 
commonly distinguished by their good sense; 
and his adduction of similar passages and 
expressions, though not always important, is 
generally successful and brought from rather 
an extensive circle of reading. As a com- 
mentator on Milton he occupies, after Patrick 
Hume, Pearce, and Newton, the very first 
place : and I wish that he had been satisfied with 
these three learned and ingenious men as his 
associates, and had rejected the trash which 
has been imposed on his facility by the gen- 
tlemen who write with ease, to mitigate the 
pains and penalties of idleness, or to indulge, 
in the only way open to them, the vanity of 
authorship. 



THE END; 



INDEX 



TO THE 



LIFE OF MILTON. 



Abbot, abp. 220 

Addison, 521, 530, 531, 594 

iElian, 203 

iEschylus, 86, 100, 559 

Alexander VI, pope, 260 note 

Alphry, Mr. 207 

America, the preserver of the fame 
of the British classics, 122 

a proof, that neither 

tithes nor establishments are ne- 
cessary to Christianity, 475 

American epitaph on Bradshaw, 
316 note 

Andreini, 525 

Anglesey, earl of, 337 

Apollonius, 253 

Ariosto, 193 note, 532 note 

Aristotle, 332 note, 561 

Army, under Charles I, refuses to 
fight the Scots, 169 note 

its agitation after the death 

of Charles, 434 

; conduct on the death of 

Cromwell, 470 

Arthur, king, 182, note, 195 

Ascham, 524 note 

Assembly of divines, 461 

Atterbury, bish. 568 note 

Aubrey, 45 note, 71, 200, 205, 
547 note, 549, 573 note 

Auger, 329 

Aylmer, Brabazon, 552 

B. 

Bacon, the sculptor, 56S 
Barberini, cardinal, 136, 139 
Barebones' Parliament, 438 



Barebones' Parliament, resigns,439 

Bargrave, Dr. 136 note 

Barkstead, Mr. 495 note 

Barnes, Joshua, 572 

Baroni, Leonora, 140, 573 note 

Barrow, Dr. 548 

Bayle, 365, 388, 392 

Beaux of the puritan age, 207 

Bedell, bish. 1 28 note 

Bembo, 193 note 

Bendyshe, Henry, 506 note 

Benson, Mr. 568, 633 note 

Bentley, Dr. 536 ib. note 

Betterton, 490 

Bindley, Mr. 8, 247 note 

Birch, Dr. 41, 87, 330 note, 354 
note, 392, 431 note, 455, 595 

Blackburn, archdeacon, 39 note 

Blake, admiral, 457, 498 

Bonmatthei, T33, 134 

Bontia, see Pontia 

Borlase, rev. George, 55 note 

Bouquet, Mr. 625 

Bourdeaux, the French, ambas- 
sador, 414 

Boyle, Robert, 502 

Bradshaw, 290, 308, 309 note, 328 

his character, 309, 311, 

313 
epitaph on him, 316 

note 

Bramhall, abp. 205 note, 393, 395 
note 

Brand, Mr. 597 

British Critic, 614 note 

Brutus, grandson of vEneas, fabu- 
lous conqueror of Britain, 1S2 
note 



IND 

Bucer, Martin, 247, 298 note 
Buckhurst, lord, see Dorset, earl of 
Bucolic verse, structure of, 1 74 
Burke, Edmund, 357, 360 note, 

486 note 
Burnet, bish. 345 note 
Burney, Rev. Dr. C. 62 note 
Butson, bish. 638 



C. 



Caesar, Julius, 22, 435 

Calamy, Edmund, 237 

Calvin, 298 note 

Cambridge Latin Dictionary, 464 

Caroline, queen, 594 

Cave, 17, 620 

Celsus, 203 

Chappell, Wm. reputed author of 
the Whole Duty of Man, 55 

Charlemont, earl of, 572 

Charles I, violence of his conduct, 
21 6, 217 note 

popish intriguesconduced 

to his misfortunes, 232 note 

civil war in his time 

eminent for benignity and mo- 
deration, 286 

his conduct after his last 

defeat, ib. 

. his character, 323 

his corpse said to have 

been hung at Tyburn, 495 note 

Charles II, 472, 487, ib. note, 488, 
497 note, 508 note 

his conduct on his res- 
toration, 493 

the press shackled by 

him 521 note 

Chaucer, 150 note 

Chorus of the Greek drama, 559 

Christina, queen of Sweden, 389, 

3 C A 427 

praised by all the great 

scholars of Europe, 428 note 

beloved by her people, 

and her abdication opposed by 
the remonstrances of the senate, 
ib. 

verses under Crom- 
well's portrait sent to her, by 
Milton, 430 

Church of England, 222, 227,475 



EX. 

Clarendon, lord, 224, 341, 344 

note, 496 note 
Clarges, Sir Thomas, 489 
Clarke, Mrs. (Milton's daughter) 
578 note, 582, 583, 594, 597 
note 
Clarke, Mr. 526 note 
CI ay pole, Mrs. 498 
Clement, 391, note 
Clementillo, 133 
Climate, without influence on the 

human intellect, 159 note 
Coltellino, 133 

Commonwealth and monarchy con- 
trasted, 481 
more humane than 

the monarchy, 491 note 
Comnenus, Andronicus, 332 note 
Composition, 10 
Conde, pretended agent of the 

prince of, 319 
Controversy, 241 
Coronation oath, 348 note 
Council of state, 306, 307 
Cowley, 84 
Cowper, Wm. to note, 19, 22, 

185 note, 214 note, 606 
Translations by 

him, 607, 608 note 
Cradock, Mr. 572 
Criticism cannot render dull poetry 

pleasing, 555 
Critics, public, 12 
Cromwell, 286, 288, 289, 290, 

310 note, 430. 521 note, 565, 



;88 



his character, 435, 446, 



47: 



. the protestants of Pied- 
mont saved by his interposition, 
318 note 

foments the agitation 

of the army, 435 

made protector by it, 

439 
Milton's panegyric of 

him, 441 

his death, 469 

reputed disinter- 
ment, 494 note 

Richard, 470 

Henry, 470 note 

Cunningham, 487 note 



INDEX. 



D. 

Dante, 270, 532 note 

Dati, Carlo, 132 

Davenant, bish, 218 

D'Avenant, sir W. his life saved 

by Milton, 489 
Davis, Miss, 251 
Dawes, 62 note 

Defence of the People of England, 
five editions of it published in the 
coarse of a few months, 388 note 
Delille, abbe, 551 note 
Denham, sir John, 550 note 
Deodati, Charles, 1st elegy to, 62 
note, 65 note 

letterto,ii3note, 

1 1 5 note 

account of him, 

169, 184 note 

poem on his 

death, 170, 175 

second elegy to, 

208, 212 note 

Giovanni, 16S 

Theodore, 170 

Desborough, 470, ib. note 
Diodorus, 641 

Disney, rev. Dr. 24, 597, 598 
Divines, assembly of, 461 
Divorce, on the causes of, 248 
Dobson, capt. 245 
Doryslaus, 524 note 
Dorset, earl of, 549, 550 note 
Douglas, bish. 624 and note 
Douce, Mr. 614 note 
Drama, Grecian, 558 
Drummond, 271, i&. note 
his sonuet to the night- 
ingale, 271 note 
Dryden, 79, 529, 54S, 549, 644 
Du Moulin, Dr. Lewis, 224 note 

Peter, scurrilous 

and profane, 409 note 

cowardly 

and base, 420 note 

see Moulin, du 

Dunster, Mr. 431 note, 554 
Duppa, bish. 33 S 
Dutch, embassy from the, 320 
Dutton, Mr. 466 

E. 
Ecclesiastical establishments not 
essentially necessary, 475 



Education, Milton's plan of, 200, 

255 ^ 
EjkcJv a\rfiivr J} 335 

rj irigTi, 336 note 

Elections, Milton's scheme for, 477 
Elliot, sir John, 217 note 
Ell wood the quaker, 509 
Engagement, substituted for the 

solemn league and covenant, 432 
England, antiquity of its freedom, 

its constitution, 585 

Episcopacy attacked by Milton, 227 

defended by bish. Hall, 

232, 237 
view of the question^ 

234 
Esie, Leonora of, 140 note 



Fairfax, 437, 565 

Faithorne, 597 

Fannius, 488 note 

Females, punishment of burning, 

abolished by act of parliament, 

491 note 
Fenton, Elijah, 80, 552, 645 
Fleetwood, 470, il. note 
Foster, Mrs. 547 note, 582, 595 
Fox, Mr. C.J. 23 
Francini, Antonio, 132, 137 
French language, 551 note 
Frescobaldi, \%x 



Frcntinus, 203 
Fuller, 330 note 
Fuseli, 144 



G. 



Gaddi, 133 

Galileo, 134, 168 note 

Gard, du, 328, 329 

Garden houses, 206 note 

Gaudcn, Dr. the author of Icon 

Basilike, 337 note, 338, 345 

note 
Geminus, 203 

Geoffrey of Monmouth, 305 
George, Dr. 569 
Gesner, 172 
Gifford, Wm. 23, 31, 156 note, 

187 note 



INDEX. 



Gilby, 298 note 
Gill, Alexander, 52 

jun. ib. and note 

Goodman, Christopher, 298 note 
Goodwin, John, 490 note 
Gray, 71 

false quantity of his, 60 note 

Grecian drama, 558 
Griffith, Dr. Matthew, 486 
Gronovius, J. F. 397 note k 
Grotius, 130 

H. 

Hale, sir Matthew, 457 
Hall, bish. 218, 233, 240 
.... answers Milton on episco- 
pacy, 232 
.... defends his answer, 237 
.... defended by his son, 238 
Hammond, colonel, 289 note 

sir Peter, 2 1 7 note 

Happiness, what essential to, 589 
Harpe, la, 535 note 
Harrison, 309 note 
Hartlib, Samuel, 255 
Hawkins, sir John, 632 note 
Hayley, Mr. 10, 19, 39, 41, 156 
note, 185 note, 525> 527, 551 
note, 606, 643 
Heimbach, Peter, his address to 

Cromwell, 514 note 
letter to him, 

515 

Heinsius, Nicholas, 59 note, 388 
note, 391 note, 392 note, 396 
note, 397> 412 note, 417 note, 
428 note, 579 note 

Henderson, 346 note . 

letter of Charles J to, 

347 no^ 

Henrietta, queen of Charles T, sanc- 
tioned the Irish rebellion, 301 

Hertford, Marquis of, 338 

Hesiod, 203 

Hewett, Dr. 498 note 

Hills, 328, 331 note 

Hoc, short in some of the comic 
poets, 58 note 

Hogg, his relation of Mr. King's 
shipwreck, 108 note 

translation of Paradise 

Lost into Latin, 624 



Hollis, Mr. Thomas, 597, 595 
Holstenius, 136 
Homer, 531, 532, 538 
Horace, 310 note 
Horsley, bish. 438 note 
Howard, Henry, 270 note 
Hume, 646 

instance of his disinge- 

nuousness, 343 

Patrick, 646 

Hungerford, sir George, 550 note 

Hurd, bish. 273, 608 

Hyde, sir Edward, see Clarendon 



Icon Alethine, 335 
Icon Basilike, 321 

answered, 322 

suspected by Milton 

not to be written by king Charles, 

334 
written by Dr. Gau- 

den, 337 note, 338, 345 note e, 

ib. note f 
its great sale, 344 

note 
Icon episte, 336 note 
Iconoclastes, 322 
Imitation, in poetry, 608 
Ireland, rebellion of the catholics, 

in, 300 

massacre in, ib. 

Ireton, 288, 289, 290, 291, 495 
his death, 437, ib. note 



James II, his visit to Milton, 508 
note 

Janssen, Cornelius, 45 

Jenkins, sir Leoline, 570 

Jodrell, Mr. 572 

Johnson, Dr. 14 

strictures on his life 

of and criticisms on Milton, 39, 
72, 171, 204 note, 330 note, 
506 note, 507 note, 540 note, 
547 note, 550 note, 568 note, 
631 

his connexion with 

Lauder's affair, 620 

letter for Lauder, 

626 



IND 

Johnston, Dr Arthur, his Latin 
version of the Psalms, 627 

Jones, sirWm. 62 note, 118 note, 
576 note, 589, 616, 618 

Jonson, Ben. 52 note 

Jortin, Dr. 553 

Junius, Francis, 396 and note, 579 
note 

Juxon, bish. 330 note 

K. 

Killegrew, Mrs. Ann, 79 
King, Edward, 108 and note 
Kings, tenure of, 293, 298, 299 



L. 



Laing, 230 note, 345 note 
Lambert, major general, 309 note, 

494 
Langhorne, Dr. 157 note, 185 note 
Lansdown, marquis of, 123 note 
Latin, Milton would have it pro- 
nounced in the foreign mode, 

5 1C > 5 11 

Laud, abp. 219 

Lauder, 329, 633 note 

his attempt to defame Mil- 
ton, 618 

Lawes, Henry, 106 

Leighton, Dr 220 note 

L' Estrange, sir Roger, his answer 
to Milton, 487 

Leven, earl of, 286 

Ley, lady Margaret, 245 

.... James, earl of Marlborough, 

245 
Liberty, essential to the perfection 

of man, 587 
Liberty of conscience, 230 ib. note, 

474 

a republic 

most favourable to, 481 
Licenser of the press, revived by 
Charles the second, 521 

see Press 

Lindsey, earl of, 496 note 
Literary Journal, 106 note 
Long parliament, 215, 224, 45 S 
dissolved by Crom- 
well, 438 

revived, 470 

Love, Mr. his execution, 433 



EX. 

Lucretius, 202, 203, 405 note 
Ludlow, 291, 310 note, 524 note 
Luther, 298 note 

M. 

Mabbot, Gilbert, resigns the office 
of licenser of the press^266 and 
note 
Magistrates, tenure of, 294 
Malatesti, 133 and note 
M alone, Mr. E. 549 note 
Man, liberty essential to the per^ 

fection of, 587 
Manilius, 202 

Manso, Giovanni Battista, marquis 
of Villa, 144, 148 note, 168 note, 
465, 528 note 

poem to, 148,153 

Marino, 148 note 
Marlborough, earl of, 245 
Marshall, Stephen, 237 
Marvell, Andrew, 430 note, 466, 

489, 548 
his letter to Mil- 
ton on having presented his 2d 
Defence to Cromwell, 455 note 

account of him, 

466 note 

, of the 

death of his father, 467 note 
Mask, a dramatic piece, what, 104 
Mason, 560 
Matthews, rev. Mr 24 
May, 84, 498 note 
Millar, Mr. 207 
Millington, the auctioneer, 337 

note, 501 
Milton, family of 41 

his grandfather, 42 

accountofhisfather,42,43_ 

his brother Christopher, 43 

sister Ann, 43, 44 

birth, 45 

portrait of him, 45, 597 

his education, 46 

entered at Christ's college, 

Cambridge, 54 
slander respecting his con- 
duct and treatment at the uni- 
versity, 4, 56 note, 57 
charged with false quan- 
tity, 58 note, 175 note 
an early poet, 77 



Milton, his progress in poetry 

73 

poem on the death of 

an infant, 78 
ode on the morning of 

Christ's nativity, 80 

Latin poems, 83 

A ;. letter from him to a 

friend in defence of his studies, 

s? 

leaves the university, 91,92 

his Arcades, 97, 98 

Ccmus, 97, 99 

Lycidas, 97, 108 

1' Allegro, 97, 117 

il Penseroso, 97, 117 

compared with Shak- 

speare, ioi 
published with diffi- 
dence, in 
his letter to Deodati, 113, 



INDEX. 

. 77 



"5 



.... death of his mother, 1 25 

.... letter to him from sir H. 

Wotton, 126 

.... travels to Paris, 130 

.... proceeds to Italy, 131 

.... stops at Florence, ib. 

. . . . applauses he received there, 



132, 133 



his skill in the Italian lan- 



guage, 153, T34 
.... visits Rome, 



panegyrics on him there. 



137 



illness, 138, 



139 

nam 



to Leonora 



singing, 140 
Italian 



sonnet to her, 



I42 



153 



goes to Naples, 144 

his poem to Manso, 148, 



*55; 



.... projects an epic poem 
158, 159, 195,465 
.... prevented from visiting Si- 
cily and Greece by the troubles 
in England, 163 
.... revisits Rome, 164 

Florence, ib. 

.... goes to Venice, 165 
Geneva, ib. 



Milton, did not take a superficial 
view of Italy, 167 

returns to England, 168 

his poem to the memory 

of his friend Deodati, 170 

reasons why he wrote in 

English, 192 note 

engages in controversy, 

195, 196, 215 

educates his two nephews, 

and some others, 198 

hence called a schoolmas- 
ter, 199 

his conduct in this respect 

examined, ib. 

plan of instruction, 200, 

201, 202 

removes from St. Bride's 

to Aldersgate street, 206 

abstemious, 207 

his second elegy to Deo- 
dati, 208, 212 note 
two books of Reforma- 
tion touching Church -govern- 
ment in England, 227 
answers to Hall's De- 
fence of Episcopacy, 233 

Animadversions on the 

Remonstrant's Defence, 237 
Apology for Smectym- 



nuus, 239 



245 



marries, 243 

his wife leaves him, 



s 44, 



receives more pupils, 244 
.... his father comes to reside 
with him, 244 

dies, 245 

Doctrine and Discipline 

of Divorce, 247 

.... . . Judgment of Martin 

Bucer concerning Divorce, ib. 

Tetrachordon, ib. 

Colasterion, ib 

.... summoned before the house 

of Lords, 248 

.... pays his addresses to Miss 

Davis, 251 

.... reconciled to his wife, 252 

.... his Treatise on Education, 

255 • • , ,"■ 
Areopagitica, on the li- 
berty of the press, 258 



INDEX. 



Milton, an edition of his poems 
published, 26S 

remarks on his sonnets, 

271 

criticism on his ode to his 

poems sent to the Bodleian li- 
brary, 281 note r 

his eldest daughter born, 



:S 3 , 284 

. . . the Powells leave his house, 



285 

.... birth of his second daugh- 
ter, ib. 

.... removes to High Holborn, 
ib. 

.... appointed Latin secretary 
to the council of state, 286, 308 
.... his office nearly equivalent 
to that of the modern secretary 
of state for the foreign depart- 
ment, 319, 396 note h 
.... his Tenure of Kings and 
Magistrates, 293 

Observations on the 

Peace with the Irish, 300 
History of England, 



3°4;457> 55 2 

.... his Iconociastes 



321,322 
asamst the 



.... vindicated 

charge of forgery, 329 

.... answers to his Iconociastes 



.... removes to Charing Cross, 
and thence to Scotland yard, 

349 

.... birth of his son, ib. 

.... removes to Petty France, 

ib. 

answers Salmasius, 350, 



362 

.... his Defence of the People 
of England, 363, 364, 365, &c. 
.... defended from a charge of 
falsehood, 372 note 
.... his account of his loss of 
sight, 378, 384 

.... answers to Milton's De- 
fence, 391, 303, 406 
.... birth of his third daugh- 
ter, 398 

. . . . . date of his blindness, 399 
. . . . his sonnet to Cyriac Skin- 
ner on his loss of sight, 400 



Milton, marriage and death of his 
second wife, 405 

sonnet on the death of his 

wife, 406 

his second Defence, 408, 

420 

answer to this, 415 

his Defence of himself in 

reply, ib. 

account of himself, 421 

his panegyric of Cromwell, 

441 

engaged in three great 

works, 457 

his Latin Thesaurus, 457, 

464 

Paradise Lost, j.64, 518,, 

523 

Marvell made joint secre- 
tary with him, 466 

publishes sir Walter Ra- 
legh's Cabinet Council, 469 

his Treatise of Civil Power 

in Ecclesiastical Causes, 474 

Likeliest means to re- 
move Hirelings out of the 
Church, ib. 

Present Means andBrief 

Delineation of a free Common- 
wealth, 477 

Ready and Easy Way 

to establish a free Common- 
wealth, ib. 

..... answers to his Tracts on a 
Commonwealth, 485 

his Notes on Dr. Griffith's 

Sermon, 486 

answered by Lestrange, 48 7 

at the Restoration secreted 

in Bartholomew Close, 487 

said co have had a mock 

funeral, ib. note 

his life saved chiefly by 

sir W. D'Avenant, 489 

taken into custody, 500 

rents a house in Holborn, 

removes to Jew in street, 

ib. 

Artillery Walk, 

Bunhill Fields, ib. 

lodges with Millington the 

auctioneer, ib. 



INDEX. 



Milton, marries his third wife, 502 
his nuncupative will, 503, 

57° 

ill behaviour of his daugh- 
ters, 503 

his Accidence commenced 

Grammar, 506 

edition of Ralegh's A- 

phorisms of State, 507 

visited by James duke of 

York, 508 note 

retires to Chalfont on ac- 
count of the plague, 5 1 2 

Paradise Regained suggest- 
ed to him, 513 

returns to London, ib. 

his Paradise Loss, 518, 528 

apprehensive of assassina- 
tion, 524 

his genius most vigorous in 

winter, 539 

manner of composing, 

547 
two French translations of 

his Paradise lost, 551 note 

his Paradise regained, 552 

Samson Agonistes. 557 

Art of Logic, 560 

True Religion, Heresy, 

Schism, Toleration, &c. 562 
second edition of his Poems 

and Tracts on Education, 565 

his familiar Letters, ib. 

. University Exercises, ib. 

Brief History of Mus- 
covy, 566 

works of his lo^t, 566 note 

his death, 567 

t his Epitaph, 569 note 

report of his grave having 

been opened, 569 note 

his person, 573 

habits, 574 

character, 578,593 

erudition, 582 

politics, 584 

religion, 589 

children, 594 

portraits of him, 45, 597 

t his verses to his father, 599 

Lauder's attempt to defame 

him, 619 
Miltonists, 250 



Mind, not influenced by climate, 
but by political and moral causes, 
160 note 

Minds of high powers, intent on 
knowledge, above licentious in- 
dulgences, 73 

Minshull, Eliz Milton's third wife, 
502, 506 note 

Monneron's Translation of Paradise 
Lost into French, 551 note 

Montesquieu, 1 60 note 

More, Alexander, 407, 409, 416 
note, 418 note, 429 note, 441 
note 

replies to Mil- 
ton, 415,416 

objects to Mil- 
ton the assumption and arro- 
gance of his address to Crom- 
well, 441 note 

Morgan^ Maurice, 122 note 

characterof, 1 23 

note 

Morhoff, 566 

Morrice, secretary, 489 

Morus, Alexander, see More 

Mostly, Humphry, 268 

Moulin, du, 70 note, 393, 406, 
409 note, 418 note, 419 note, 
429 note, 580 

Dr. Lewis, 224 note 

N. 

Namancos, no note 

Naseby, battle of, terminated the 

war with Charles, 286 
Navigation act, the work of the 

Long Parliament, 432 
Nedham, 390 note 
Newcomen, Matthew, 237 
Newton, bish. 331 note, 431 note, 

557 note, 595, 646 
Nicetas, 332 note 

O. 

Oldenburgh, Henry, 523 

O'Neale, 302 

Oppian, 203 

Ormond, earl of, his peace with 

the Irish, 300, 303 
Orpheus, 210 note 



INDEX. 



Overton, colonel, 456 
Owen, Mr. 476 note 
Oxenbridge, Mr. 455 note 

P. 

Paget, Dr. 501 

Paine, Thomas, 336 note 

Pakington, Lady, 55 note r 

Palmer, Herbert, 247 note 

Papias, 235 

Papists, their intrigues conducive 

to the ruin of Charles the First, 

232 note 
not objects of political 

jealousy in the present times, 

562 note 
Paraeus, 298 note 
Parr, Dr. Samuel, 23, 58 note, 59 

note, 60 note, 180 note 
Parliament, Long, 215, 224, 458, 

470 

Rump, 432 

Barebones', 439 

Party, 37 note 

Pastoral poetry, English, remarks 

on, 172 
Payne and Bouquet, 625 
Pearce, bish. 526 note, 646 
People, the source of political 

power, 364 
Peter Martyr, 298 note 
Peters, Hugh, 494 
Petrarch, 270 
Petty, sir Wm. 255 

lord Henry, 123 note 

Philaras, Leonard, 374, 375, 381, 

333 

Philips, Edward, brother in law of 
Miiton, 44 

nephew of Mil- 
ton, 44, 198, 204 note, 205, 274, 
3i9> 505, 523, 526, 539, 553 
note, 581 note, 616 

J°k n > 44> *9 8 > 205, 394 

note, 395, 464 

Piedmont, the Protestants of, saved 
by the interposition of Crom- 
well, 318 note 

Pierpont, lady Anne, 25 c Lote 

Pliny, 203 

Plutarch, 303 



Poetry compared with painting and 
sculpture, 143 

observations on, 555 

Pontia, servant of Madame de Sau- 
maise, 410 

epigram on her, 411 

assists her mistress in whip- 
ping a boy, 412 note 

attacks her lover, Morus, 

417 note 

Pope, 489, 490, 615, 627, 644 

Popery, whether tolerable or no, 
562 and note 

Powell, Mary, 243, 252, 616 

Powell, Richard, Milton's father in 
law, 243, 253 note 

Prelacy, see Episcopacy 

Presbyterians, intolerant, 248, 258, 
259> 265, 304 

followed the steps of 

the episcopalians when in power, 
259> 265,461,462 

unite with the royal- 
ists, 471 

Press, liberty of the, defended, 259 

reasons against licensing, 266 

note 

set free by Cromwell, 521 

note 

shackled by Charles the Se- 
cond, ib. 

Price, Dr. 486 note 

Ptolemy, 183 note 

Puckering, sir Henry Newton, 5 26 
note 

Pulpit politics, 486 note 

Punishment of burning for females 
abolished by act of Parliament, 
491 note 

Pym, 498 note 



Q. 



Quintus Calaber, 203 



R. 



Ralegh, sir Walter, his Cabinet 
Council published by Milton, 469 

his aphorisms 

of state, 507 

Ramus, Peter, 561 



IND EX 



Ranelagh, lady, 502 

Religion, on things indifferent in, 
230 note 

conscience should be per- 
fectly free in matters of, 474 

neither tithes nor esta- 
blishments necessary to, 475 

Republic, see Commonwealth 

Reynolds, sir Joshua, 5 98 

Rich, colonel, 310 note 

Richardson, 199, 489, 501, 505, il\ 
note. 507, 523, 524 note, 539, 
545, 546, 547 notes f and g, 

549> 575 note > 57 6 > 57 8 nof e 

anecdote related by him 

on the subject of the Paradise 
Lost authentic, though ques- 
tioned by Mr. Malone, 549 note 

Robinson, Dr. Tancred, 524 note 

Roos, or Ross, John lord, 250 note. 

Rouse, John, 276 

ode to, 277 

translation of, 

by F. Wrangham, 610 

Rowland, rev. John, 393, 394 note 

Royston, R. 329 

Rump parliament, 432 

dissolved by 

Cromwell, 438 

Rushworth, 288 note 

S. 

Salmasius, 59 note, 350, 366, 389, 
390, 396 note, 397 note, 410, 
417, 490 note, 579 note, 580 

his Defensio Regia, 352 

answered 

by Milton, 362 

» violent agitation of 

mind on the success of Milton's 
answer, 391 note 

story of his ghost al- 
luded to by N. Heiasius, ib. 

Salsilli, 137, 138 

Sarrau, Claude, 352 note, 416 

, his inscription un- 
der a portrait of Salmasius, 354 
note 

death, il. 

distichs by him on 

a medal of Christina, 428 note 

Saumaise, see Salmasius 



Saumaise, madame de, 390, 410 

jealous of 

Christina, 390 

her charac- 
ter not immaculate, 41 1 note 

violent tem- 
per of, 412 note 

Scott, Walter, 333 note 

Scribonius, Salmasius so called, 397 
note, 579 note 



3°. J 3! 



Scudamore, lord, 

Selden, 435 

SeJvaggi/137, 138 

Seward, miss, 275 note 

Shakspeare, 271, 332 note 

imitation of, by Mil- 
ton, 98 

compared with Mil- 
ton, 101 

permanenceofhisfame, 

122 note 

Sidney, sir Philip, 27 t, 327 

Simmons, Samuel, purchases Para- 
dise Lost, 5 1 8, 5 1 9 note, 55 2 

Sixtus the Fourth, 260 note 

Skinner, Cyriac, 400, 456 note, 
565, 567 note 

Smectymnuus, origin of this title, 

237 

Apology for, 239 

S medley, 645 

Smith, Charlotte, 275 note 

Solomon's Song, 172 

Somers, 521 

Sonnet, origin and structure of the, 

269 
remarks on the, 270, 275 

note 
Southampton, earl of, 496 note 
Spanheim, Frederic, 168 
Spencer, countess dowager, 616 
Spenser, 271 
Spirit, not totally divested of body, 

except in the Deity, 529 
Sprat, bish. 568 note 
Spurstow, William, 237 
Stanhope, Mr. Charles, 597 
Sterling, rev. Joseph, 156 note 
Stockdale, Percival, 185 note 
Strode, Mr. 217 note 
Surrey, earl of, 270 and note, 528 

note 



INDEX. 



Switzerland, 165 note 
Symmonds, 340 and note 
Symmons, Caroline, 275 note 

sonnet by ,276 

note 
Charles, jun. transla- 
tion by him, 540 note, 542 note 

T. 

Tasso, 140 note, 528, ib. note, 532 

note 
Teignmouth, lord, 616 
Terentianus Maurus, 58 note, 174 

note 
Theocritus, 172, 174 note 
Thevenot, Dr. 375, 384 
Thurloe, 399, 414 note, 506 note 
Tickell, 80, 645 
Tithes, not necessary to the support 

of religion, 474, 475 
Todd, Mr. 93 note, 136 note, 156 

note, 330 note, 372 note, 395 

note, 399, 552 note, 557 note, 

567 note, 640, 646 
remarks on his edition of 

Milton's poetical works, 640 
Toland, 41 note, 329, 345, 387, 

388, 477, 539, 540, 567, 590, 

591 note 
Tomkyns, Thomas, 521 
Tonson, Jacob, 552 
Tovell, Mr. 55 note 
Tovey, Mr 55 note 
Trissino, 527 

Trumbull, sir William, 571 note 
Tyers, 487 note 
Tyrants accountable to the people, 

293 

U. 

Usher, abp. 218, 233, 235, 240, 

241 
Uther Pendragon, 182 note 

V. 

Vane, sir Henry, jun. 308, 310 

note, 494 
sonnet to, 

31°. 565 
Venice, fate of, 165 note 



Virgil, 210 note, 532 

accused of a false quantity, 

58 note 

his bucolics, 174 note 

Vitruvius, 202 

Voltaire, 525 

Vorstius, 350 note, 389 note 

Vossius, Isaac, 58 note, 388 note, 
392, 396, ib. notes g and h, 417 
note, 428 note 

opinion of, on the 

burning of the Defence of the 
People of England by the parlia- 
ments of Paris, 490 note 

W. 

Waldenses, 318 note 

Waldron, Mr. 333 note 

Walker, Dr. 338 

Mr. J. C. 396 note, 6$j 

Wall, Mr. of Causham, 476 

Warburton, bish. 553 

Ward, Dr. 583 

Ware, Mr. 375 note 

Warton, Mr. 72, 73 note, 85, 98 
note u and x. 1 08 note, 121 note, 
149 note, 157 note, 171 note, 
280, 281 and note, 331 note, 
414 note, 415, 429 note, 430 
note, 487 note, 503, 598, 613, 
614 note, 615, 644 

Dr. 615 

Watson, bish. 372 note, 643 

Whitbread, Mr. 568 note 

Whitelocke, 217 note, 435, 446 
note 

Whole Duty of Man, author of, ib. 
note r 

Williams, abp. 218, 220, 221 note, 
240 note 

Wood, 71, 390 note, 489, 566 
note 

Woodcock, Catharine, Milton's se- 
cond wife, 405 

Wotton, sir H., his letter to Milton 
going abroad, 1 26 

Wrangham, Francis, 30, 208, 277, 
609 

his translation 

of Milton's ode to Rouse, 610 

Wright, Dr. 578 noto ■ 
2 u 



INDEX. 



Xenophon, 203 



Young, Patrick,. 63 8 



Young, rev. Thomas, 49, 50 note, 
226, 237 

Z. 

Zwinglius, 298 note 



N. B. The references in this volume to Milton's Prose Works are 
made to the last edition of them, published, in 6 vols 8vo, in 1806. 



T. Bensley/Trint't, 
Bolt Court, Fleet Street, London. 



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